Joe Biden Car Salesman? Yep, Uncle Joe is determined to get you to buy all electric cars (EVs), even if you can’t afford one. Watch:
Here Uncle Joe says that an EV will save $80 a month more than your current internal combustion engine care. But wasn’t it Uncle Joe who made gas prices go up? Is his making gasoline and diesel fuels more expensive a way to force your to buy an EV?
Do you trust him yet?
BIDEN: “A typical driver will save about $80 a month from not having to pay gas at the pump” if they just buy an electric car. pic.twitter.com/Rjjtj7poeJ
Finally here’s Uncle Joe again Biden telling us Americans to buy a very expensive EV. Are you convinced now? Are you ready to Go Green by buying your very own EV?
Let’s Look At EVs
One of the greatest persistent, persuasive and unrealistic myths is the idea that the United States must abandon coal, fossil and nuclear fuels in favor of windmills, solar panels and all electric vehicles. This persistent, persuasive and unrealistic myth is now public policy!
President Biden has united automakers and autoworkers to drive American leadership forward on clean cars, and he set an ambitious target of 50% of electric vehicle (EV) sale shares in the U.S. by 2030. Now, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will supercharge America’s efforts to lead the electric future, Building a Better America where we can strengthen domestic supply chains, outcompete the world, and make electric cars cheaper for working families.
QUESTION: What exactly will charge the chargers and the batteries in these clean cars?
EVs Are Not So Green
A reader send us a link to this post on Reddit:
Not so Green
This is an excellent breakdown.
Batteries, they do not make electricity – they store electricity produced elsewhere, primarily by coal, uranium, natural gas-powered plants, or diesel-fueled generators. So, to say an EV is a zero-emission vehicle is not at all valid.
Also, since forty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S. is from coal-fired plants, it follows that forty percent of the EVs on the road are coal-powered, do you see?”
A typical EV battery weighs one thousand pounds, about the size of a travel trunk. It contains twenty-five pounds of lithium, sixty pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic. Inside are over 6,000 individual lithium-ion cells.
It should concern you that all those toxic components come from mining. For instance, to manufacture each EV auto battery, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth’s crust for just – one – battery.”
Sixty-eight percent of the world’s cobalt, a significant part of a battery, comes from the Congo. Their mines have no pollution controls, and they employ children who die from handling this toxic material. Should we factor in these diseased kids as part of the cost of driving an electric car?”
I’d like to leave you with these thoughts. California is building the largest battery in the world near San Francisco, and they intend to power it from solar panels and windmills. They claim this is the ultimate in being ‘green,’ but it is not. This construction project is creating an environmental disaster. Let me tell you why.
The main problem with solar arrays is the chemicals needed to process silicate into the silicon used in the panels. To make pure enough silicon requires processing it with hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, nitric acid, hydrogen fluoride, trichloroethane, and acetone. In addition, they also need gallium, arsenide, copper-indium-gallium- diselenide, and cadmium-telluride, which also are highly toxic. Silicon dust is a hazard to the workers, and the panels cannot be recycled.
Windmills are the ultimate in embedded costs and environmental destruction. Each weighs 1688 tons (the equivalent of 23 houses) and contains 1300 tons of concrete, 295 tons of steel, 48 tons of iron, 24 tons of fiberglass, and the hard to extract rare earths neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium. Each blade weighs 81,000 pounds and will last 15 to 20 years, at which time it must be replaced. We cannot recycle used blades.
There may be a place for these technologies, but you must look beyond the myth of zero emissions.
“Going Green” may sound like the Utopian ideal but when you look at the hidden and embedded costs realistically with an open mind, you can see that Going Green is more destructive to the Earth’s environment than meets the eye, for sure.
The Bottom Line
EVs are neither carbon-neutral nor powered by batteries. The batteries in EVs are all powered by other energy sources. The truth is that mankind cannot become carbon neutral without hurting mankind itself.
We have long recommended that America go all nuclear power. Nuclear power is clean, carbon free, reliable and cheap.
America’s power lies in its ability to provide power to the engines of our current and future economic growth.
Starving America of power, makes America powerless. Starving our citizens of cheap and reliable power is a direct threat to our fiscal and national security.
To be powerful America needs powerful sources of energy. Nuclear, oil (for gasoline, diesel and aviation fuels) and natural gas are the best and most accessible means to energy independence.
Energy independence translates into life, liberty and the pursuit of our collective happiness.
Without cheap and reliable power sources the lights in that city on the hill will most certainly go out – for everyone.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-02 11:51:252022-04-02 11:51:25Would You Trust Biden to Sell You Your Next Car?
Greg Kozera, director of marketing for Shale Crescent USA is a professional engineer and an environmentalist with more than 35 years of experience in the natural gas and oil industry. He also is the author of the books Just the Fracks, Ma’am and Learned Leadership. Kozera is a past president of the Virginia Oil & Gas Association.
TOPIC: Will Natural Resources Restore America As A Manufacturing Power Again?
Tim Bryce is is a freelance writer residing in the Tampa Bay area of Florida. An avid writer and speaker discussing everything from business and management, to politics and morality, to systems and technology in our ever changing world. In addition to his columns and blog entitled “The Bryce is Right’ which is read by thousands of people worldwide. Tim has also been published in a wide range of publication from the WASHINGTON TIMES to the HUFFINGTON POST.. Tim’s new book, “ “Before You Vote: Know How Your Government Works”, What American youth should know about government”
TOPIC: THE AFTEREFFECTS OF THE 2020 ELECTION!
Tim Winter, President of the Parents Television Council. With more than 20 years in broadcasting, cable, internet and new media technologies, along with a law degree, Tim Winter brings a wealth of experience to his position as president of the Parents Television Council. Mr. Winter can often be seen on television news circuit, including CNN, MSNBC and Fox News; he is frequently cited by the nation’s leading newspapers such as USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and he is a regular source for numerous industry publications such as Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and Broadcasting & Cable.
Author’s Note: Earlier today, I read this riveting article by Michelle Malkin, Never Forgotten: The Lies About Terri Schiavo, in which she describes in detail the vicious lies that were perpetuated by the powers-that-be in this case and, of course, dutifully and malevolently, repeated ad infinitum by the craven media. It is my hope that together, Malkin’s and my article below, originally published in 2005 after Terri’s death, will give you a broad picture of this tragic case.
The Reptilian Brains of Terri’s Executioners
For decades, neuroscientists have recognized that the brain has three distinct systems. One is derived from primitive reptiles that were adept at survival strategies. Another includes the limbic system––often called the “seat of emotions.” The third includes the neocortex and prefrontal lobes (comprising the right and left hemispheres of the brain) that account for thinking, verbal abilities, and other “higher” functions.
My theory is that Terri’s putative husband Michael, his attorney George J. Felos, and Judge George Greer–who ruled for years against Terri’s right to life–have highly developed reptilian brains and prefrontal lobes, but that they are sorely lacking in anything resembling a normal limbic system.
What exactly is the limbic system? Located just below the neocortex, it is the part of the brain that governs––among other emotions––affection, feelings, and most of all, empathy.
What is empathy? Simply, it is the ability to feel what others are feeling. It is not sympathy, which is feeling sorry for someone or that something happened. Empathy, on the other hand, is the ability to put oneself in the place of another person and actually experience the feelings they are experiencing––be they joy, anxiety, fear or pain.
Persuasive research over the past several decades, conducted by the most prestigious science institutions both in America and abroad, has relied on PET and more recently fMRI scans (the “f” stands for functional) that visualize brain activity to demonstrate that structural and functional abnormalities in several brain regions (the limbic system, the amygdala, the hippocampus, et al) account for a lack of empathy.
People who lack empathy are called sociopaths, a euphemistic version of what was once called psychopaths. Like all cold-blooded killers, they are literally incapable of feeling what another person feels. While they may be expert at affecting what amounts to a parody of normality and integrity, charm, and intellect, underneath their guises is a total inability to “feel your pain.”
CALLING A SPADE A SPADE
You can call it bad character, or you can say, as liberals and retro psychotherapists do, that the unfeeling person––like the terrorists who murdered nearly 3,000 innocent Americans on September 11, 2001––are “victims” of their upbringings or circumstances.
I say that no matter the source of the behavior, people lacking the kind of empathy that allows them to kill without remorse––for instance, to starve a healthy woman to death––are no different than other 21st Century terrorists and deserve the same consequences: indictment, conviction, and imprisonment.
While antidepressant, anti-anxiety and anti-psychotic drugs have successfully treated millions of people with biologically driven mental illnesses––there is NO CURE for sociopaths!
Does this describe the likes of Michael Schiavo, Felos and Greer? You decide.
From what I observed, all of them are reptilian in their icy coldness, and malevolent fakers when they use the “higher centers” of their brains to dissemble and pretend that they “feel” what they clearly don’t feel at all.
They all knew exactly what starvation would entail for Terri, who at the time of her court-ordered death sentence was vibrantly healthy, save for her limited mental function. To name but a few horrifying symptoms that she probably experienced were:
Skin rashes that they knew she couldn’t scratch as well as irritation of all her tissues, particularly of the tongue, mouth, and vagina,
Shrinking of her vital organs like the heart and lungs,
Uncontrollable diarrhea and/or painful contractions of her intestines,
Frightening weakness that she never felt before,
Swelling from fluid under her skin,
Immune deficiency,
Psychotic thinking.
And these merchants of death were also aware that the dehydration they ordered––depriving Terri of water––would entail:
Unbearable, unquenchable thirst,
Muscle weakness and therefore painful cramps,
Nausea and vomiting,
Deep rapid breathing and/or, to Terri, a frightening increased heart rate,
Dried out skin in her nose as well as the pain of cracked lips,
The shutdown of her kidneys,
Loss of consciousness.
SNAKES DON’T CARE
Ostensibly unmoved by her plight were a triumvirate of reptiles: Terri’s money-hungry husband had already collected a million dollars in a malpractice settlement about his claim that doctors failed to diagnose her so-called but still-undocumented bulimia, and he also stood to receive $1.2 million as the heir to the remainder of that judgment; his seemingly euthanasia-infatuated attorney; and the idealogue judge.
All of them were unmoved by Terri’s agonizingly slow death because they claimed she would have chosen that fate for herself. Never mind the absence of a signed Living Will or videotape of her wishes.
During the nearly two weeks that Terri suffered after her feeding tube was removed, empathic people throughout the world had a heightened awareness of their own hunger pangs and thirst, and the merciful availability of the food and drink at their fingertips. But the reptiles didn’t.
When Michael Schiavo––who had obviously been busy following the money––decided that “for better or worse, through sickness and health, ‘til death do us part” were inconvenient elements of the marital oath he swore before God and chose not to divorce Terri nor to seek an annulment of their marriage but opted instead for bigamy and to father two children.
And the normal empathy that develops when people become parents didn’t appear to happen to Michael. Instead of “feeling” the pain that Terri’s parents experienced and identifying with their determination to care for their daughter “in sickness and in health,” he seemed to feel––as all reptiles do––nothing.
And in what federalist.com called “the final act of selfish cruelty, [he] arrived only minutes before her death [and] denied the request of her parents, Mary and Bob Schindler, to remain with Terri for her final breath.”
A VOICE OF MORALITY
The website’s commentary went on to cite the words of Pope John Paul II, whose empathy for humanity and evolved morality provided stark contrast to the reptilian natures of Michael Schiavo and company. Last year, the Pope––on a feeding tube himself in his final days–– effectively declared his `living will’ in a speech to doctors and ethicists, saying: “The administration of water and food, even when provided by artificial means, always represents a natural means of preserving life, not a medical act.” He described the denial of such care “euthanasia by omission.”
As far back as 1950, Five Star General Omar Bradley stated what could be aptly applied to the Terri Schiavo case: “We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount…the world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.”
“What can we expect?” asks Christopher Flickinger in an article in www.therant.us. “For those citizens with handicaps or disabilities, you are forewarned – someone may have his eye on you. If you’re blind, deaf, mute, in a wheelchair, on crutches, use a walker or a cane, walk with a limp or have an appendage missing, you better mind your P’s and Q’s. One little slip-up, just one, and someone could deem your life unfit for living, take away your wheelchair, put you in a Hospice center and starve you to death. [The] excuse would be, “Well, they’re worthless shells of a human. Those cripples have been draining my pocketbook for years – all those ramps and elevators and special parking spots. Forget about legislation in order to fix Social Security. I’ll fix it myself by lightening our load… With this new precedent of social Darwinism sweeping the nation, there’s no end to the possibilities. In a way, we’ll pick-up where Hitler failed. Forget about a master race. We’re more interest in preserving the lives of those who can win the race. And as for everyone else, Pandora’s box is now wide open.”
In Schiavo’s case, criminal proceedings may yet ensue. According to NewsMax.com, Florida’s Department of Children and Families had received 89 allegations that Schiavo had abused his wife – but Judge Greer (surprise!) ruled that DCF summaries of those allegations must remain secret to everyone except (surprise!) Michael Schiavo himself. However, The St. Petersburg Times and the Tampa Tribune have now filed lawsuits for the release of the abuse summaries.
It’s too late for Terri––and the millions of babies who were the victims of infanticide through abortion since her death––but it’s not too late for American citizens to take careful note of those elected officials––overwhelmingly liberals––who through their support of abortion and now euthanasia are responsible for what has become a “culture of death” in our country, and to boot them out of office or make sure they are never elected or reelected.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-02 11:51:232022-04-02 11:51:23The Reptilian Brains of Terri’s Executioners — ‘A CULTURE OF DEATH’
The State Department on Thursday announced that it will make an “X” gender marker available on U.S. passports beginning April 11, and the option to select the marker for other forms of documentation will become available next year.
On State Department public forms, the “X” gender marker will be defined as “Unspecified or another gender identity.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that the definition “is respectful of individuals’ privacy while advancing inclusion.”
The news of the State Department’s “X” gender marker comes after the department announced last June that it would begin allowing U.S. passport applicants to self-select their gender as “M” or “F,” and that it would no longer require medical certification if an applicant’s choice did not match the gender on their other documentation.
Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.
Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.
Remember, YOU make the work possible. If you can, please contribute to Geller Report.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-02 11:51:222022-04-02 11:51:22State Department announces gender ‘X’ marker for U.S. passports
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-02 11:51:212022-04-02 11:51:21Video: This Week in Jihad with David Wood and Robert Spencer
Addressing a Boston anti-slavery audience in 1865, abolitionist Frederick Douglass asked, “What shall we do with the Negro?” The answer he provided was a favorite of the conservative economist Walter E. Williams, though if Douglass were to utter it today he would probably be condemned by Black Lives Matter and deplatformed from social media:
Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall!
Douglass was a great advocate of “self-made men,” and was willing to place the destiny of the freedmen in their own hands. So, it is not surprising that Walter Williams was fond of quoting Douglass on this theme. Both men believed that genuine liberty must mean not only the liberty to strive and succeed, but the liberty to fail, too.
Williams, who died in December 2020, deeply valued the whole spectrum of American freedoms, but his perennial concern was economic liberty. For 40 years, in a number of scholarly works and hundreds of syndicated columns, Williams was an unflagging critic of government interference in American lives. He is often known as a libertarian, but in the second half of his career, he increasingly allied himself with paleoconservatives on social and cultural issues—an association that occasionally exposed unresolved tensions in his work.
Image: Walter E. Williams as a child, photographed with his father, mother, and sister (Walter Williams / via Twitter)
Born in Philadelphia in 1936, Williams was himself a self-made man, yet in reading his autobiography, Up from the Projects (2010), one recognizes the powerful influence of his mother, Catherine. She single-handedly kept Williams and his sister out of serious poverty after their father abandoned the family not long after Williams’ birth. In 1941 Catherine moved her family to the Richard Allen Homes, a housing project in North Philadelphia, which Williams described as a black “lower middle-class” neighborhood. The Richard Allen project was a very different sort of place than the slums that would emerge in minority neighborhoods in many American cities after the 1960s. There was little serious crime; gangs and unwed mothers were rare; and teenage unemployment rates were lower on average than in many white communities.
Williams laments the fact that children growing up in North Philly today, attending “rotten” schools and dwelling in fatherless homes, have greatly diminished opportunities to work. Such opportunities, he writes, “not only provide the pride and self-confidence that comes from financial semi-independence,” but also teach young people how to achieve success in their adult years.
After high school, Williams drifted back and forth between Philadelphia and Los Angeles—where his father had settled and remarried—making two abortive attempts to start college. Eventually settling on Philadelphia, he drifted from one job to another. This rudderless period in his life found its nadir when he was charged in 1958 by the Philadelphia police for resisting arrest and assaulting an officer. The assault charges were false, by Williams’ account, though he was found guilty and given a lenient sentence. The bright spot in that year was that he was introduced to his future wife and lifelong companion, Connie Taylor, who would prove to be the rudder he needed.
In 1959 Williams began two years of service in the Army, about which he was fond of saying that serving in the military is a “million-dollar experience that you wouldn’t do again for a million dollars.” His rebellious tendencies were very much on display during this period, especially after discovering that segregation among the ranks was still the reality, despite the Army’s claims to the contrary. Blacks, by his observation, were rarely promoted into administrative positions but were usually relegated to maintenance jobs.
Until the day he was discharged in 1961, Williams made it his business to disrupt the racial status quo, usually by way of pranks. In one instance at Fort Stewart, where he had been assigned to the motor pool, he was ordered by his sergeant to paint a two-and-a-half-ton truck. “The whole thing?” he asked, playing the role of a half-wit. “Yes!” said the sergeant. So Williams proceeded to paint every inch of the truck, including the windshield, the windows, and the tires. Naturally, he was transferred out of the motor pool, as had been his intent.
After his Army stint, Williams returned to school and finished his bachelor’s degree in economics at California State College in 1965, then entered graduate school at UCLA. He was at that time an admirer of Malcolm X and an LBJ liberal, voting against Barry Goldwater in the 1964 election. Yet he was also attracted by libertarianism and began to read widely among great libertarian thinkers like Frédéric Bastiat and Friedrich Hayek. Among the professors who influenced Williams was Thomas Sowell, an economist who would thereafter become a lifelong friend and collaborator.
In 1972 Williams was hired as the director of the Urban Institute, in Washington D.C., where he completed his dissertation and began the research that would result 10 years later in The State Against Blacks (1982), in which he painstakingly examined the many ways that government stifles the economic activity of minorities, oftentimes despite good intentions to the contrary.
One example is minimum wage laws, a form of “economic malpractice” that he railed against frequently over the years. Although study after study confirms that minimum wage mandates contribute directly to rising rates of unemployment among poor and unskilled workers, some prominent economists routinely call for minimum wage hikes. However, as Williams wrote, employers themselves recognize that the cost of employing low-skilled workers is greater than the return those workers bring to their businesses. So they look for ways to eliminate the need for such workers, through automation, for instance. Moreover, the oft-made claim that minimum wage laws combat poverty is ludicrous. Prominent economists who make such claims do so not out of ignorance, Williams asserted, but to ensure that their “compassionate” stance will secure them a place on the “brie, tofu and champagne circuit.”
Many of the arguments in The State Against Blacks are reprised in Williams’ 2011 book, Race & Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed on Discrimination? But this later work is a more sweeping indictment of the regulatory state, and it reflects the debates that followed the Great Recession of 2007-2009. What motivated the banks to engage in reckless subprime lending? Williams argued that although there is no single answer to that question, for years the banks had been accused of systematic mortgage discrimination against blacks and other minorities. Already in 1977, with the passage of the Community Reinvestment Act, and then via a host of further legislative initiatives in the 1990s, lenders found themselves under constant surveillance by the Federal Reserve Banks, which had become, in effect, instruments of egalitarian redistribution.
In a 2009 review of Sowell’s The Housing Boom and Bust, Williams emphasized that such initiatives were not just a Democrat hobby horse but were also pushed by the Bush administration, which pressured Congress to enact legislation requiring the Federal Housing Administration to “make zero-down-payment loans at low-interest rates to low-income Americans.” In his review, Williams pointed out that during the last years of the Bush presidency, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had accumulated roughly $1 trillion in subprime loans and had guaranteed at least twice that much in mortgages.
Promoters of all this risky lending, such as Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), later blamed the crisis on a lack of sufficient regulation in the private sector. Williams disposed of this claim easily: Between 1980 and 2007, “regulatory spending … almost tripled, rising from $725 million to $2.07 billion.”
For years, both Williams and Sowell had been among those crying out against the recklessness of subprime lending, to no avail. Their essential argument was simply that government interference in the free market economy, at any level, can only lead to economic loss for everyone concerned—except, of course, the politicians and bureaucrats who feast on the fatted calf of regulatory spending.
By 1974 Williams began teaching at Temple University, a stint that lasted six years, though it was interrupted by a year-long fellowship at the Hoover Institution. In 1980 Williams joined the Economics faculty at George Mason University, where he would remain for the rest of his teaching career. Among his scholarly endeavors in the 1980s was the book, South Africa’s War Against Capitalism (1989), which challenges the standard view that the apartheid system was driven fundamentally by racism. While he did not deny that racism was a major factor in the regime, he demonstrated that apartheid was maintained in practice only by extensive government interference in the market, forcing employers in many sectors of the South African economy to submit to “whites only” hiring practices even when they went against their economic interests.
Image: Walter E. Williams as a professor at Temple University (Temple University)
In the late 1970s, Williams began writing a weekly newspaper column for the Philadelphia Tribune, then in 1980 for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. By 1991 he joined the Creators Syndicate, which began publishing his columns nationwide, allowing him eventually to reach an enormous audience in over 140 newspapers and magazines. In fact, most of his American readers first encountered Williams’ ideas through his columns, many of which were also republished in his books, beginning with America: A Minority Viewpoint (1982) and concluding with American Contempt for Liberty (2015).
In his weekly columns reflecting on current events, often humorous and always pithy, he ranged well beyond economics and race to explore education, democracy, the cult of rights, even health and environmental controversies—just to name a few. While the demands of these weekly columns regrettably brought an end to his more scholarly work, it is also true that their popularity made him a powerful force in shaping American opinion for the better—that is, in a more conservative direction.
But to what extent do the views of the libertarian Williams align with those of more traditionally minded conservatives? The answer is that, especially in the last 25 years of his writing life, most of his positions were reliably conservative. Indeed, at times, he sounded like a man of the Old Right in his defense of the Tenth Amendment and state sovereignty or in his provocative stance on nullification. In a 2009 column, “Parting Company,” he quoted a number of state ratification documents between 1788 and 1790 to show that the people believed that the Union was a creation of the states and that those states had every right to nullify unconstitutional laws passed at the federal level. He acknowledged that most Americans today “say to hell with the Tenth Amendment limits on the federal government.” But what, he asked, might be a “more peaceful solution” to an irresolvable conflict between state and federal powers? “[O]ne group of Americans seeking to impose their vision on others or simply parting company?”
In one of the last columns he penned, “Historical Ignorance and Confederate Generals” (July 2020), Williams eloquently refuted the claims of Gen. Mark Milley that the secession of the Confederate states was an act of “treason.” Perhaps it was Williams’ steadfast refusal over the years to demonize the South and her military heroes that led the editors of Southern Partisan to memorialize his death by publishing a eulogy penned by his old ally, Sowell.
Image: Walter E. Williams (Creators Syndicate)
On the other hand, Williams’ libertarianism is sometimes uncomfortably extreme, veering at moments toward an atomistic, neo-Lockean notion of the individual as an entity undetermined by social bonds. This is perhaps best illustrated by his position on whether one has the right to sell one’s organs on the open market. In a 1999 interview with the Independent Institute, and then in a 2002 column, “My Organs Are for Sale,” he argued that the controversy is essentially a question of ownership. The body, he said, is one’s private property. If people can sell their used cars or their refrigerators, why not their body parts?
In the U.S., the sale of bodily organs—by the “owner” or by anyone else—was then and is still illegal. One can donate but not traffic in hearts or livers. The problem, said Williams, is a matter of market scarcity. Donors are too few, and demand is high. By the rational calculus of the free market, the solution is to create an incentive for individuals (or their families) to profit by the sale of their organs. If on your deathbed, the argument goes, you instruct a family member to sell your still-functioning organs (after all, it would be a waste to consign them to the tomb) and reap a healthy monetary gain, then you are doing a good deed for your family as well as benefiting society. If someone objects that to do so would be to desecrate your body by reducing its parts to commodities, that would be mere sentiment.
Needless to say, many conservatives, especially those adhering to traditional religious faiths, would reject such a rational calculus. Even if in some limited sense my body is my property, it is certainly not the same sort of property as my automobile. The body, even after death, is not merely an object; it is also a “subject”—that is, the repository of my soul (to put it in religious terms) or the locus of my will, my imagination, and my familial associations. The Western tradition, dating back at least as far as the Iliad, testifies to this deep-seated intuition. After Achilles repeatedly desecrates the body of the fallen Hector, he is finally brought to his senses and shamed by Priam, Hector’s grieving old father, who reminds Achilles of his own dear father. Thus Achilles relents and allows a proper burial.
While Williams admired Frederick Douglass, he was in many ways closer in spirit to the great libertarian novelist and essayist Zora Neale Hurston. He never cited her work, though both he and Hurston were honored in a round table discussion in 2021 on “Race and Liberty in America,” hosted by the Independent Institute, a libertarian think tank. Like Hurston, Williams was an unflagging proponent of individual liberty as well as a trenchant critic of black leaders who robbed African Americans of the spirit of independence by fostering in them a culture of resentment against white oppression.
Hurston, in a brief auto-biographical essay, “How It Feels to Be Colored Me,” vigorously rejected what she famously called the “sobbing school of negrohood”—that is, the school of victimology championed by the likes of W.E.B. DuBois. She believed that the philosophy of “racial pride” peddled by the Harlem “Nigeratti” was little more than a form of tribalism that allowed blacks to evade any responsibility for their own failures. While Williams, like Hurston, never denied the historical reality of discrimination against blacks, he never succumbed to the temptation to don the robes of the perpetually aggrieved.
*****
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-04-02 04:05:002022-04-02 04:05:00Weekend Read: Remembering Walter E. Williams
In 2021, the migrant surge at the southern border hit its highest point in two decades.
But as bad as things are currently, the situation at the border may get even worse.
President Donald Trump’s administration created the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention order Title 42 to allow immediate deportation of illegal immigrants coming from countries where there was a widespread communicable disease.
It was a commonsense measure to protect public health during a time of pandemic. Even the Biden administration kept the rule in place.
That could soon change.
Pressure from activists and the reduction of COVID-19 restrictions has, according to multiple reports, led the administration to reconsider Title 42.
It’s noteworthy that the same activist groups and politicians that insisted on the most restrictive COVID-19 policies at home have been most vocal about ending a rule that would allow border officials to do the bare minimum to preserve the health and safety of Americans during a pandemic.
Ending Title 42 could have serious consequences at a time when the overall picture at the border is grim.
Even before President Joe Biden took office it was clear that he would take a different approach to the border than his predecessor. Once in office, he worked quickly to ensure it would be more difficult to arrest, detain, and deport illegal immigrants.
In the months after Biden became president, illegal border crossings soared.
The administration and its media allies initially dismissed this as a temporary, “seasonal” problem.
It wasn’t.
The number of July border arrests, in a hot month that typically sees lower border crossing numbers, went over 200,000. This is the highest number seen in any single month in over 21 years.
The trend hasn’t abated in 2022. In February, there were 164,973 encounters between Border Patrol and illegal immigrants at the southern border. This is a threefold increase from February 2020 and marks a yearlong streak of over 150,000 border apprehensions per month.
As the New York Post noted, there have been over 2 million border encounters since Biden became president and an estimated half-million additional illegal border crossers who’ve avoided Border Patrol.
What we have at the border is already an epic crisis that requires a serious rethinking of policies and rhetoric coming from the White House. Biden, you may remember, maligned Border Patrol in September by accusing agents of abusing migrants.
The story of agents “whipping” migrants was debunked, but Biden never apologized. It is now six months into the official investigation and no report has been released.
So not only is Border Patrol besieged by the very serious task of dealing with a historic migrant surge, it’s also been thrown under the bus from the top.
It’s in the context of this environment that the administration is set to make the border control problem significantly more challenging.
Even two Democratic senators from Arizona, a border state at the forefront of the crisis, insisted that Title 42 remain in place.
Democratic Arizona Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly sent a letter to Biden expressing their concern. They wrote:
Given the impacts that changes to Title 42 could have on border communities, border security, and migrants, we urge your administration not to make any changes to Title 42 implementation until you are completely ready to execute and coordinate a comprehensive plan that ensures a secure, orderly, and humane process at the border.
Former acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection Mark Morgan blasted the idea of removing Title 42 as one that “defies logic and common sense.”
In an interview with The National Desk, he explained how it would overload an already taxed system.
“The facilities are already dangerously overcrowded,” Morgan said. “And when we start seeing those numbers, which we’ve already started to see flow in, it’s going to be crushing. There’s going to be nothing for them to be able to do except release individuals as fast as possible. Many of these individuals we’re not going to know anything about. We are not going to know who they are. It’s simply going to endanger America, and it’s going to cost lives.”
The border crisis is getting worse, not better. One of the primary jobs of the federal government is to maintain the border and uphold the laws that the American people have put in place to do so.
What we have now is a border that in a short amount of time has become a sieve and an administration apparently unwilling to change course or stand up to the most extreme left-wing activists.
It’s the same tack we’ve seen from Democrats and the “defund the police” movement. Again and again, they cave to the most extreme voices on the left and the country pays the consequences.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-04-02 04:00:002022-04-02 04:00:00Border Crisis Is About to Get a Lot Worse
A newly released report from Republican lawmakers on the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis alleges that teachers’ unions had “unprecedented access” in determining school COVID-19 guidelines after giving millions of dollars to Democratic candidates in 2020.
The report confirmed what The Center Square reported last year, including that teachers’ unions such as the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) gave tens of millions of dollars to Democrats before heavily influencing school re-opening guidance.
“Teachers’ unions, including AFT, donated more than $43 million to liberal groups and candidates during the 2020 election cycle,” the report said. “The two largest unions – which both endorsed then-candidate Biden for President – have approximately 4.7 million members. [CDC scientist] Dr. [Henry] Walke’s testimony to the Select Subcommittee shows the Biden Administration rewarded their support with unprecedented access to the policymaking process for guidance on re-opening schools.”
The report said that “the Biden Administration rewarded [teachers unions] support with unprecedented access to the policymaking process for guidance on re-opening schools.”
“The Operational Strategy that was developed jointly by the CDC and AFT reflects the fact that the Biden Administration prioritized its political allies over the health and welfare of school-aged children,” the report said. “Director [Rochelle] Walensky downplayed the degree to which the CDC gave AFT access to the policymaking process. In fact, the CDC shared a draft with the AFT at least two weeks before finalizing the document and solicited the union’s feedback.”
AFT President Randi Weingarten has defended her union’s work with the CDC, saying she has an obligation to advocate for her teachers. Teachers’ unions largely pushed for delaying school re-openings, calling for stringent vaccination and masking requirements.
Those school closures led to some students falling behind academically and struggling with mental health.
“Research also shows that school closures affected students in other ways,” the report said. “According to McKinsey, parents whose children have fallen significantly behind academically are one-third more likely to say they are ‘very or extremely concerned about their children’s mental health. Black and Hispanic parents are seven to nine percentage points more likely than white parents to report higher levels of concern.”
The report comes after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention came under major fire for removing 24% of pediatric COVID-19 deaths it initially had recorded, saying it made an error. Those inflated death totals were used to justify school masking and shutdown policies around the country.
According to the report, minority children were hit hardest by the lockdowns.
“The effects of the Biden Administration’s politicization of the CDC have been felt most acutely by students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds, including those attending majority-Black or low-income schools, according to a July 2021 report by McKinsey and Co,” the report said. “At the end of the 2020-21 school year, most students were about four to five months behind in math and reading levels.”
The Republicans behind the report called for an investigation.
“Because lawyers for the Biden Administration prevented a key witness from explaining why the CDC allowed AFT to write key portions of its guidance for re-opening schools, there are still several unanswered questions,” the report said. “This matter should be investigated further. America’s children are suffering, academically and mentally, because of the choices of liberal local and state officials. Republicans will not rest until we have rectified the harms perpetrated against children in America.”
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-04-02 04:00:002022-04-02 04:00:00GOP report: Teachers Unions Got ‘Unprecedented Access’ After Donating Tens of Millions to Democrats
The War on Parents is heating up. A public middle school in Connecticut suspended a school nurse for revealing online the school was secretly gender-transitioning kids without their parents’ knowledge. The nurse said the school was giving puberty blockers to kids and starting the process of confusing kids about their gender in kindergarten. Teachers, social workers, and school administrators are all part of the program. In suspending the nurse, the school said some remarkable things: It is the school’s job, not the parents’ job, to be the caretakers of children. Further, schools and not the parents must provide for the health, well-being, and social and emotional development of children. That’s just stunning. The job of the parents, I guess, is to just shut up and pay the taxes that make all this insanity possible. Not to mention, as ‘birthing persons’, to turn out new lab rats for professional left-wing activists’ social engineering experiments.
Connecticut isn’t the only place where this insurrection is taking place. New reports have come in about public schools in New Jersey forcing students to learn about transgender hormone therapy without their parents’ knowledge or consent, and secret gender-transitioning occurring in schools in California, Wisconsin, and Florida. Federal support for this began in the Obama administration. The Biden administration just yesterday picked up where Obama left off, affirming puberty blockers and irreversible sex-change surgery for children.
In Texas, the state Attorney General informed the Austin school district it was breaking state law by holding Pride Week events that provided sex education to students without parental consent. The schools encouraged students to keep the content of the instruction secret from their parents. “What we say in this room stays in this room,” pre-K through second graders were told. The schools fired back against the Attorney General, telling him they want their “LGBTQIA+ students to know that we are proud of them and that we will protect them against political attacks.”
So public schools in Texas and Connecticut are NOT SORRY for driving wedges between children and their parents, or for signing kids up for political agendas, specifically, the sexual revolution and the fundamental transformation of this horrible rotten place we call America. Public schools in Eau Claire, Wisconsin aren’t sorry, either. According to them, parents are not entitled to know about their child’s sexuality at all, UNLESS the parents are fully on board with the schools’ left-wing agenda to completely destroy society in order to save it. If the parents will support the political agenda, then and only then can they be brought into the loop and be told about their children.
Here are the consequences of keeping parents in the dark and claiming it’s not their job to worry about the mental health of their children: A California teen committed suicide after being coached by her high school on how to get hormone treatment and sex-change surgery when she should have been referred for treatment for her depression. The mother blames the school, which kept everything secret, for her daughter’s death.
Anybody who opposes any of this insanity is branded a domestic terrorist by our federal government. Schools in Fairfax County, Virginia asked for proposals to collect intelligence on parents. The contract calls for monitoring social media posts, identifying parents by their real names, and mapping out all their associations. The funny thing about Fairfax is, all the school board members are professional left-wing activists. There is not even one parent on that school board.
Are you starting to get the picture? I’ve documented several times the communist roots of all this. I’ll tell you who the real terrorists are – professional left-wing activist teachers, school administrators, and school board members who will stop at nothing – even espionage – to pursue their left-wing agendas and tear everything down until there’s nothing left. It’s no accident communist theorists like Herbert Marcuse and Wilhelm Reich were the ones who ushered in the sexual revolution. And it’s no accident another communist theorist Georgi Lukacs called it “cultural terrorism”.
None of this has anything to do with education or children’s well-being. it all has to do with a communist program to destroy America. If that doesn’t bother you, and you just keep sitting on your couch eating bonbons, I guarantee you, pretty soon, you won’t have an America left to eat bonbons in.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-01 23:51:242022-04-01 23:51:24CULTURAL TERRORISM: The War On Parents Is Heating Up
There goes $433 a month from your family’s budget…
Another day, another alarming inflation metric. We just got the numbers for the Personal Consumption Expenditures index (PCE), the Federal Reserve’s favored inflation metric, and they’re jaw-dropping. The PCE hit a 40-year high in February, with the measured prices rising 6.4% year-over-year.
What does this mean in real life?
A new Bloomberganalysis sheds some light on this key question. It finds that this year, inflation will cost the typical US household an additional $5,200 just to afford the same goods as last year. That’s $433 a month taken out of the average family’s budget.
Why is this happening?
Inflation is a Policy Choice
In the mainstream media and among progressive economists, price inflation is often portrayed as an abstract force beyond our control, like the weather. But in reality, it is directly caused by reckless government policies.
The Federal Reserve decided to “stimulate” the economy amid the pandemic by (digitally) printing trillions of new dollars out of thin air. But scarcity and trade-offs are the defining reality of economic life, so their actions had consequences. By putting trillions of new dollars out into the economy, they made the dollars Americans currently held less valuable—inflating away our savings and wealth.
Just consider the below graph, which shows the number of US dollars in circulation over the last 5 years:
What’s more, the federal government flooded the economy with “stimulus” money.
It ran up massive, multi-trillion-dollar budget deficits—at the very time various levels of government were restricting economic life and constraining supply. Through trillions in debt, Congress signed us up for grave economic costs in the future in order to artificially inflate consumer demand in the short term, which doesn’t work as “stimulus” to begin with.
Yet when you do this at the very same time you are constraining the economy and hindering the supply chain, it’s inevitable that price levels overall will surge as demand so far outpaces supply.
So, no, inflation isn’t an abstract phenomenon. But it is, essentially, an indirect tax on everyday Americans.
Inflation will cost the average US family an extra $5200 this year just to maintain their same life.
That’s a tax on Americans, thanks to the Federal Reserve’s money-printing & the federal government’s fiscal recklessness.
What is a tax, after all, other than a cost forcibly imposed on the citizenry to finance/enable government expenditures? And that also perfectly describes the inflation currently hitting Americans in the wallet.
The government wanted to engage in reckless money-printing and spending without bearing the political brunt of directly raising peoples’ taxes. As a result, our savings were inflated away.
When the money printer goes “brr,” your wallet goes “ouch!”
That’s the textbook definition of a “stealth tax.”
Even John Maynard Keynes, hardly a free-market economist, famously acknowledged this reality.
“By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens,” Keynes once said.
Keynes found agreement on this point from across the spectrum. Nobel-Prize-winning free-market economist Milton Friedman similarly quipped that “inflation is taxation without legislation.”
Ultimately, Americans shouldn’t fall for this financial sleight-of-hand.
“Inflation” isn’t really what will cost families $5,200 extra this year. The government is what’s truly imposing that burden upon us all.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-01 23:51:232022-04-01 23:51:23‘Inflation Tax’ Will Cost Families This Many Thousands This Year, Bloomberg Analysis Warns
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been getting a lot of heat in recent weeks over the state’s controversial ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill (HB 1557). Disney joined the fray on Monday, the same day DeSantis signed the bill into law, with a statement condemning the legislation.
But while the controversy surrounding the bill is what’s been making headlines, a new controversy is brewing specifically with respect to Disney, and it centers on the legal structure surrounding Walt Disney World.
On Wednesday, Florida State Rep. Spencer Roach tweeted that he has been discussing with fellow legislators the possibility of repealing the 1967 Reedy Creek Improvement Act, which allows Disney World to be effectively self-governing and exempts the jurisdiction from many state laws, specifically regarding land use. “If Disney wants to embrace woke ideology, “Roach said, “it seems fitting that they should be regulated by Orange County.”
Yesterday was the 2nd meeting in a week w/fellow legislators to discuss a repeal of the 1967 Reedy Creek Improvement Act, which allows Disney to act as its own government. If Disney wants to embrace woke ideology, it seems fitting that they should be regulated by Orange County. pic.twitter.com/6sj29Gj6Wz
DeSantis himself weighed in on the proposed repeal during a press conference yesterday.
“What I would say as a matter of first principle is I don’t support special privileges in law just because a company is powerful and they’ve been able to wield a lot of power,” DeSantis said. “I think what has happened is there’s a lot of these special privileges that are not justifiable, but because Disney had held so much sway, they were able to sustain a lot of special treatment over the years.”
“I think in this particular case with Disney,” he continued, “I just don’t think you have very many people in the legislature anymore who are going to be able to defend a lot of what has been done over many years to really have them almost govern themselves in some of these things. That was probably never appropriate to start, but is certainly not appropriate now at this point.”
DeSantis is being tactful with his language, but the threat is clear. If Disney wants to push back on his agenda, he’s not afraid to revoke their legal privileges.
The laws surrounding the Reedy Creek Improvement District (i.e. Disney World’s land) are actually quite fascinating. The 1967 act creating the district basically gave it the powers of an incorporated city, and also gave it immunity from any current or future county or state land-use laws.
“Without those powers,” Richard Foglesong explains in his book Married to the Mouse, “they would be forced to submit to building inspections and planning and zoning controls by Orange and Osceola counties.” With those powers, however, they could make magic happen.
“Integrating the company’s government and development arms made possible an efficient system of building regulation. Under Potter, the Reedy Creek government developed a floor building code with its own department to supervise the code…The arrangement allowed building officials to work directly with the theme park designers…Commenting on this arrangement, Potter said ‘It saved us from a lot of problems because when a design came here we knew that it was a competent design.’ The standards were stringent, such as requiring a fire sprinkler in every room, an uncommon safety feature in the 1960s. Yet, the performance standards were also flexible.”
In short, the fact that the Reedy Creek government had so much autonomy was a major key to Disney World’s success. The flexibility allowed them to create plans that prioritized visitor experience, because they didn’t have to focus on appeasing lawmakers and rival special interest groups.
So, on the one hand, these legal privileges have been tremendously beneficial, and the success of Disney World is a testament to their utility. But the other factor here, which DeSantis is drawing attention to, is that this is basically cronyism. Disney World was given an unfair legal advantage over its competitors, one that it continues to enjoy to this day.
This presents us with a dilemma. How can we preserve the benefits of self-governing districts without the cronyism that so often goes along with them?
The answer, in a word, is decentralization. Rather than removing the exemption from Disney World, the “privileges” should be extended to Disney’s competitors. Every jurisdiction in the state should be as self-governing as the Reedy Creek Improvement District. In other words, the land use laws should be scrapped altogether.
Now, some may predict that chaos and disaster would ensue if these regulations were suddenly dropped across the state. But that’s highly improbable. Look at Disney World. It certainly hasn’t suffered for lack of these restrictions. In fact, we can almost think of Disney World as a little experiment in deregulation. Lo and behold, the experiment has been a great success. Why, then, should we not expand the scope of this freedom far and wide, seeing as it has proven so beneficial?
To sum up, Ron DeSantis is right to call out the “special privileges in law” that give big players an unfair advantage, and it’s encouraging that he sees fair competition as “a matter of first principle.” But if we’re going to address cronyism, we need to do it the right way, by scrapping the laws that make it possible in the first place. For those who believe in decentralization, deregulation, and free markets, this is a great opportunity to put these principles into practice.
This article was adapted from an issue of the FEE Daily email newsletter. Click here to sign up and get free-market news and analysis like this in your inbox every weekday.
Patrick Carroll has a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and is an Editorial Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-01 23:51:222022-04-01 23:51:22DeSantis Takes Aim At Disney — Here’s How Orlando Should Revoke Disney World’s Privileges
Evidence that The Great Reset is rapidly approaching can be seen in the recent decision by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ban real meat, and if history is any indication, the same decision may be taken by other countries as well. The U.S. ban is slated to take effect April 1, 2024
The decision comes on the heels of repeated public appeals to the Western world by Bill Gates to stop eating real meat as a climate control effort
According to the FDA, natural beef production is a primary culprit of climate change. University of California researchers have measured the amount of methane emitted by the average cow, concluding cattle “are the No. 1 agricultural source of greenhouse gases worldwide”
Each year, a single cow produces about 220 pounds of methane, and methane from cattle is 28 times more potent in warming the atmosphere than carbon dioxide
Livestock raised in massive industrial farming arrangements, aptly called “confined animal feeding operations” (CAFOs), have also been identified as a source of foodborne illness, and is yet another reason why the FDA has decided to ban real meat in favor of synthetic beef
Evidence that The Great Reset is rapidly approaching can be seen in the recent decision by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ban real meat, and if history is any indication, the same decision may be taken by other countries as well. The U.S. ban is slated to take effect April 1, 2024.
The decision comes on the heels of repeated public appeals to the Western world by Bill Gates to stop eating real meat and transition to lab-grown synthetic “beef” instead.
Gates Spearheads Fake Beef Climate Solution
As explained in the Navdanya International report, “Bill Gates & His Fake Solutions to Climate Change,” an excerpt of which was published by The Defender in April 2021:1
“One of Bill Gates’ most recent promotions is his prescriptions of synthetic foods for developed countries as a means to combat climate change. In a recent interview with MIT Technology Review, Gates says he thinks ‘all rich countries should move to 100% synthetic beef.’
Fake food replaces animal products with highly processed food grown in labs, like fake meat, fake dairy products or fake eggs. It is made possible by technical innovations such as synthetic biology, which involves reconfiguring the DNA of an organism to create something entirely new.
For instance, plant-based meat companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods use a DNA coding sequence from soybeans or peas to create a product that looks and tastes like real meat. Some companies are also investing in cell-based meat, grown from real animal cells, but it has yet to reach the market.
More and more firms are getting involved in this fast-growing market, like Motif Foodworks (plant-based meat and dairy alternatives), Ginkgo Bioworks (custom-built microbes), BioMilq (lab-grown breast milk), Nature’s Fynd (fungi-grown meat and dairy alternatives), Eat Just (egg substitutes made from plant proteins), Perfect Day Food (lab-grown dairy products) or NotCo (plant-based animal products made through AI), to name but a few.”
Beef Production Pegged as ‘Prime Culprit’ of Climate Change
According to Gates and other synthetic beef proponents — and now the FDA — natural beef production is a primary culprit of climate change.
A number of institutions have evaluated the environmental impact of cows and other livestock over the years, including University of California, Davis, where researchers like Frank Mitloehner have been busy measuring the amount of methane emitted by the average cow.2 According to UC Davis:3
“Cattle are the No. 1 agricultural source of greenhouse gases worldwide. Each year, a single cow will belch about 220 pounds of methane. Methane from cattle is shorter lived than carbon dioxide but 28 times more potent in warming the atmosphere, said Mitloehner, a professor and air quality specialist in the Department of Animal Science.”
Meat Is Also Implicated in Foodborne Disease
Livestock raised in massive industrial farming arrangements, aptly called “confined animal feeding operations” (CAFOs), have also been identified as a source of foodborne illness. Covered in feces and urine, dehydrated and often sickly, these animals are slaughtered using mechanized tools and procedures that convey these infection-loaded excreta into the final meat product.
The food and food-contaminant combination that causes the most harm to human health is campylobacter, which sickens more than 1.5 million people4 and costs the U.S. an estimated $1.3 billion a year. In second place is toxoplasma, costing society another $8 billion5 annually.
Despite the obvious reality of foodborne illness, very little was actually known about which foods were the riskiest until a report6 from the University of Florida’s Emerging Pathogens Institute revealed the pathogen-food combinations most likely to make you sick. The report, issued in 2011, showed that the data overwhelmingly pointed to tainted meats as the prime culprits.
Realizing that pasteurization of animal products such as milk falls way short of protecting human health, the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2014 proposed tackling the No. 1 source of costly foodborne illness — raw meat — by placing restrictions on the sale of raw meat.
The proposal didn’t go anywhere, but the FDA is now pointing to it as yet another reason to ban natural meat sales altogether. Lab-grown synthetic “beef” does not have any of these issues, they claim, due to the fact that all of the ingredients in each batch can be carefully controlled.
Beef Consumption Is ‘Unsustainable’
As reported by UC Davis:7
“With the escalating effects of climate change, that fact has advocates urging the public to eat less beef. They contend it’s an unsustainable diet in a world with a population expected to reach nearly 10 billion by 2050.”
As mentioned, Gates is one such anti-beef advocate. In mid-February 2021, he gave an interview with MIT Technology Review, in which he suggested that that synthetic beef, such as Impossible Foods (which he cofounded with Google and Jeff Bezos), “is a key part of climate action,” as it would eliminate a key source of global greenhouse gas emissions.8
Gates has also suggested that synthetic beef could eliminate the “protein problem,” i.e., the fact that we’re facing a global shortage of protein-rich foods in the wake of the COVID pandemic.9
The strong recommendation to replace beef with fake meat is made in Gates’ book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need,” which was released in February 2021. As for the issue of taste, Gates assured MIT Technology Review10 that:
“You can get used to the taste difference, and … they’re going to make it taste even better over time.”
The irony of Bill Gates — who lives in a 66,000-square-foot mansion and travels in a private jet that uses up 486 gallons of fuel every hour11 — talking about how to save the environment isn’t lost on everyone. Two days after his MIT Technology Review interview, The Nation criticized Gates’ contradictions, including the fact that his jet-setting lifestyle also makes him a carbon “super emitter”:12
“According to a 2019 academic study13 looking at extreme carbon emissions from the jet-setting elite, Bill Gates’s extensive travel by private jet likely makes him one of the world’s top carbon contributors — a veritable super emitter. In the list of 10 celebrities investigated — including Jennifer Lopez, Paris Hilton, and Oprah Winfrey — Gates was the source of the most emissions.”
Impossible Foods Holds 14 Patents, Has 100+ Pending
Impossible Foods’ products resemble nothing found in nature. That’s why the company holds 14 patents, with at least 100 more pending. “It’s not food; it’s software, intellectual property” — 14 patents, in fact, in each bite of Impossible Burger with over 100 additional patents pending for animal proxies from chicken to fish.
Natural foods cannot be patented, but Impossible Foods’ products certainly can be. Impossible Foods’ products are heavily processed and created in production rooms — not grown in or found in nature. Their science project creations are also heavily protected.
And the creator holds all the cards. They own the “food” and are the only ones allowed to make the “food.” All fake meat consumers lacking options for real food will be dependent on the patented ultraprocessed goo.
Circumventing Problematic Labeling Challenge
The idea is that by making the transition from real beef to synthetic “meats” in wealthier nations first, we would have the best chance of positively impacting the environment while simultaneously reducing world hunger.
In the interview, Gates admitted that use of regulation might be required “to totally shift the demand.” With that statement, he’s basically proven his “prophetic powers” yet again. At the time, he confessed that “the politics are challenging,” especially with regard to labeling. He told MIT Technology Review:
“There are all these bills that say it’s got to be called, basically, lab garbage to be sold. They don’t want us to use the beef label.”
The controversy became clear during a July 2018 public meeting convened by the FDA to discuss the naming of lab-grown meat. As reported by The Atlantic,14 various speakers referred to the lab concoctions as “clean meat,” “artificial meat,” “in vitro meat,” “cell culture products,” “cultured meat” or “culture tissue.”
Each term had its advocates and critics and consensus seemed impossible to reach. Now, with the ban on real meat sales in the U.S., the FDA basically resolves this challenge, as no special labels will be required. ALL beef products will be adulterated.
Some will be plant-based, while others will be based on tissue cells grown on a lattice. Mosa Meat, for example, grows their meat after harvesting a small number of cells from livestock “who are then returned, almost unscathed, to their fields.”15 A single tissue sample is said to be able to yield 80,000 quarter-pound hamburgers.
Yesterday’s Science Fiction May Become Tomorrow’s Reality
Food inventors are even working on cultured meat from human cells, bringing to mind the 1973 dystopian science fiction film “Soylent Green.” The movie takes place in New York in 2022. The Earth is severely overpopulated, and for sustenance, people are given rations of water and Soylent Green, which supposedly is a high-protein food made from plankton.
In the end, you discover in this futuristic nightmare fantasy of controlling big corporations, that the high-protein drink is actually made from people. Now, in the year 2022, scientists are working on lab-grown “meat” made from human cells that are harvested from the inside of human cheeks.16 As reported by Tech Times in November 2020:17
“A new ‘DIY meal kit’ that can be used to grow steaks that are made mostly from human cells … Called ‘Ouroboros Steak,’ this is named right after the circular symbol of a snake known for eating itself tail-first. This hypothetical kit would later on come with everything that one person would need in order to use their own cells to grow miniature human meat steaks …”
These kits are not yet commercially available, but it begs the question of what possesses someone to think that eating a lump of meat made from your own body could be a viable idea? The question must also be raised about whether this is cannibalism.
Those defending the concept claim that since you’re eating your own body, it’s not cannibalism. However, if it ever becomes commercially available, what’s to prevent someone from growing meat from other people’s cells — and selling it? And the ick factor aside, how could this impact the spread of disease? For example, tribal cannibalism in Papua, New Guinea,18 led to a prion disease, which nearly wiped out a tribe of people.
In many villages, after an individual died, the villagers would cook and consume the body in an act of grief. Scientists who studied the tribe believe that one person developed a sporadic incident of Crutchfield-Jakob disease, also known as mad cow disease. Eating the neurological tissue then spread the disease throughout the tribe.
How Will FDA’s Decision Impact Public Health?
While much attention is placed on taste — making products that, taste-wise, mimic real beef — few if any are talking about the proverbial elephant in the room, which is the health impacts of fake beef.
Tissue growth inside an animal occurs when the blood supply delivers appropriate nutrients to produce healthy muscle growth. This requires that the animal is fed a whole and balanced diet, from which the body extracts the necessary nutrients in an appropriate amount to feed the cells.
The human body then extracts the nutrients found in regeneratively and biodynamically pastured meat. However, as science has demonstrated in the last two decades, growing cells on sugar causes growth, but will not yield health. The sheer ability to grow lab-cultured meat does not indicate that the end product will have any health benefit to the end consumer.
One primary problem I foresee is the fact that plant-based fake meat contains excess amounts of omega-6 fat in the form of linoleic acid (LA). This, I believe, is one of the most significant contributors to ill health and chronic disease, as excessive LA leads to severe mitochondrial dysfunction, decreased NAD+ levels, obesity, insulin resistance and a radical decrease in the ability to generate energy.
The genetic engineering used to produce the flavor and texture of real meat does not reproduce healthy fatty acid composition because the substrate is canola and sunflower oils as the primary sources of fat. The sunflower oil used in both Impossible Burgers and Beyond Meats is 68% LA,19 which is an extraordinarily high amount.
It is dangerous because LA is susceptible to oxidation and causes oxidation byproducts called OXLAMs (oxidative linoleic acid metabolites). These byproducts devastate your DNA, protein, mitochondria and cellular membranes. This means that fake meat is failing all measures of sustainability and health.
Facing an Uncertain Future
I’ve often stated that if every American decided to purchase humanely raised organic beef, the CAFO system and the ultra-processed and patented fake meat industry would collapse overnight. With the nationwide ban on real meat racing toward us — 2024 is only two short years away — the window of opportunity for change is rapidly closing.
For now, however, sourcing your foods from a local farmer is still one of your best bets to ensure you’re getting wholesome food, and I would encourage you to do so while you still can. The following organizations can help you locate farm-fresh foods in your local area:
1.Local Harvest — This website will help you find farmers markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area where you can buy produce, grass-fed meats, and many other goodies.
3.Eat Well Guide: Wholesome Food from Healthy Animals — The Eat Well Guide is a free online directory of sustainably raised meat, poultry, dairy and eggs from farms, stores, restaurants, inns and hotels, and online outlets in the United States and Canada.
This is an April Fool’s article and the FDA ban on real meat is a fictional scenario.A primary reason why we post April Fool’s articles is to act as warnings. We want to wake people up to see what could happen if actions aren’t taken to protect and preserve freedom.
Over the years, many of our April Fool’s “jokes” have come true, including our fictional prediction of adult vaccine mandates and internment camps. This isn’t a coincidence. This is planned, and you can see it happening around you. The future of your personal and medical freedoms has not yet been decided. The ending will depend on you.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-01 22:52:082022-04-01 22:52:08FDA Announces Real Meat Will Be Banned in 2024?
Christopher Rufo is a man on a mission. In 2020, he declared a “one-man war against critical race theory” — and his efforts have been kindly rewarded.
A “CRT Legislation Tracker“ on his website logs over a hundred bills in dozens of US states aimed at curriculum transparency and the purging of divisive, racialised teaching in schools. Fourteen states have seen successful passage of at least some of these protections.
More dangerously, parents across America have awoken from their slumber, joined Rufo’s cause, and become loud and active at local school board meetings.
So the Walt Disney Company has every reason to tremble now that Rufo’s crosshairs are pointed in its direction.
On Wednesday, Christoper Rufo posted five leaked videos to his Twitter feed revealing top executives and producers discussing the company’s “not-at-all-secret gay agenda” which includes a push towards queerness and quotas for LGBT cartoon characters. He followed it up with an exposé in City Journal.
“Last year, after my report on Disney’s critical race theory training program, Disney quickly deleted it from the company’s internal servers,” he writes. “But executives did not abandon identity politics. In fact, they added another component — gender ideology — and ramped it up.”
The leaked footage discussing Disney’s “gay agenda” did not come from a closed-doors boardroom, but at a company-wide online meeting aimed at appeasing woke employees in the wake of Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law being passed earlier this week.
The hot-button legislation simply bans “classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity” in “kindergarten through grade three”. It also requires that any content on such topics be “age-appropriate” for older students.
Nevertheless, Disney has joined the parade of outrage labelling it the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, and framing it as an attack on the dignity of LGBT people.
Disney’s “most intersectional employees” were recruited to present at the “Reimagine Tomorrow” meeting, writes Rufo. They included “a ‘black, queer, and trans person,’ a ‘bi-romantic asexual, and ‘the mother [of] one transgender child and one pansexual child’,” he adds.
One presenter was Latoya Raveneau, who has worked in writing, animation and production for several popular children’s TV shows, including Puppy Dog Pals (2017-2019), Rise Up, Sing Out (2022), and The Proud Family (2022).
“Our leadership over there has been so welcoming to my not-at-all-secret gay agenda,” Raveneau told meeting attendees. Having grown up “watching all of the classics,” she said she was delighted to discover how much permission was given for “adding queerness” into cartoons, such as having “two [queer] characters kiss in the background”.
SCOOP: I’ve obtained video from inside Disney’s all-hands meeting about the Florida parental rights bill, in which executive producer Latoya Raveneau says her team has implemented a “not-at-all-secret gay agenda” and is regularly “adding queerness” to children’s programming. pic.twitter.com/eJnZMpKIXT
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) March 29, 2022
Karey Burke, the president of Disney’s general entertainment content and “a mother of two queer children” meanwhile lamented that while Disney has “many, many, many LGBTQIA characters in our stories,” not enough of them play a lead role.
Production coordinator Allen March shared that the team behind the upcoming television series Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur has “been really open to exploring queer stories”. One of his roles was to “put together a tracker of our background characters to make sure that we have the full breadth of expression” of “gender nonconforming characters” in the new show.
A Disney Parks diversity and inclusion manager, Vivian Ware, explained the woke policies being implemented for park visitors in Florida. These include staff no longer calling young girls “princess”, even if they are “presenting as female” — and replacing gendered greetings like “ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls” with “friends” or “dreamers of all ages”.
One of the more bizarre moments leaked by Rufo was when an Equality Florida representative addressed LGBT Disney staff. She said the De Santis bill was pushed by people seeking to “erase you, criminalise your existence… [and] demonise who you are” — and that “the next step is to criminalise you and take your kids”.
Safe to say, Disney’s woke capitulation won’t end well — for anyone.
“Executives have empowered activists within the company and now seem unable to resist their demands,” warns Rufo. “Observers should watch Disney closely in the coming years. However the story ends, the company looks like a case study in ideological capture.”
The #BoycottDisney hashtag has seen over 324,000 tweets in recent days.
Disney employees who disagree with the entertainment behemoth’s pivot towards radical sexual politics have written an open letter calling for a politically neutral Disney, and invited staff, shareholders and customers alike to sign it.
The Daily Wire has used the scandal to launch a Disney alternative, Daily Wire Kids, made possible by the conservative outlet’s swollen US$100m annual revenue, as the balkanisation of American culture continues.
Woke staff, media activists, and Disney’s progressive adult audience may see progress. Only the company’s bottom line over coming years will tell the true story.
Kurt Mahlburg is a writer and author, and an emerging Australian voice on culture and the Christian faith. He has a passion for both the philosophical and the personal, drawing on his background as a graduate… More by Kurt Mahlburg
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-01 22:52:072022-04-01 22:52:07Disney has a ‘not-at-all-secret gay agenda’ and it won’t end well
Breitbart News reports that tech billionaire Mark Zuckerberg is denying any wrongdoing following the announcement of an upcoming documentary from Citizens United Productions, Rigged: The Zuckerberg-Funded Plot to Defeat Donald Trump, which details the leftist’s $400 million effort to bolster then-candidate Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
The documentary explains how Zuckerberg and left-wing operatives dumped $400 million in election efforts to elect Biden over former President Donald Trump under the guise of assisting with elections in the midst of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.
A spokesperson for Zuckerberg released a response attempting to dismiss the documentary as irrelevant:
“This film, of which we’ve only seen two minutes so far, appears to feature the same people advancing the same claims that have been debunked by multiple federal and state courts and respected news organizations, only this time, set to dramatic music.”
But in fact, the film has nothing to do with any of the other assertions, theories, or lawsuits surrounding the election. The cash flow is verifiable.“
We attempted to contact Mark Zuckerberg for a response to the facts laid out in our documentary while we were shooting it, and we never received a reply. That fact is noted in the film,” wrote Citizens United President David N. Bossie in a statement. “Zuckerberg admits that he hasn’t seen the film, but denies its contents anyway. He then claims that the facts as laid out in the film have been ‘debunked’ in court, although the points made in the movie were not the subject of any of the lawsuits surrounding the 2020 election that he’s referencing,”
Bossie continued, concluding that Zuckerberg’s statement “does nothing to counter the many facts – supported by official IRS tax forms filed by the non-profit groups Zuckerberg funded – we spell out in Rigged.”
How Zuckerberg’s Money Affected Both the Senate Runoff Races in Georgia in 2020
Zuckerberg continued to use his enormous wealth to influence political elections in a major way even after the 2020 presidential race. Indeed, the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) gave $14.5 million of Zuckerberg’s money to selected Georgia counties for the monumentally important January 2021 runoff elections where Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Osoff won a pair of U.S. Senate seats that effectively gave their party a majority in the Upper Chamber of Congress. In the runup to those two races, more than 60 percent of CTCL’s grants in Georgia were earmarked for Fulton and Dekalb counties, both of which are heavily Democratic.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-01 22:52:062022-04-01 22:52:06Zuckerberg Dismisses Citizens United Film Exposing $400 Million Effort to Elect Biden
French Presidential elections in the two stage First Round, April 10, 2022, and Second Round April 24th appear to be influenced by the European security crisis with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, impact on both domestic issues and concern over lack of active campaigning by incumbent President Macron-seeking a second term. He has earned mixed reactions for his adroit handling of the COVID pandemic. His rotation as the current EU President, direct diplomatic efforts with Russian President Putin in Moscow over the Ukraine invasion crisis ,and ‘narrow passage’ handling of EU sanctions against Russia is tempered by the difficulty posed by the more than $13 Billion investments by major French businesses there. That was cited by embattled Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in his virtual speech before the French National Assembly and Senate when he cajoled major French automobile, energy, and retail businesses in Russia:
“French companies must leave the Russian market … Renault, Auchan, Leroy Merlin and others … must cease to be sponsors of Russia’s military machine, sponsors of the killing of children and women, sponsors of rape, robbery and looting by the Russian army.
“All companies must remember once and for all that values are worth more than profit, especially profit on blood. We must already think about the future. About how we will live after this war.”
Notwithstanding these remarks, Zelensky appears to be held in high regard by the French for his resolute Churchillian oratory in defense of his people and requests for military aid. Zelensky was applauded by French political leaders, media and is held in high esteem by the majority of the French public for his resolute defense of his country against the Russian onslaught.
That paralleled similar virtual addresses to the US Congress, UK Parliament and German Bundestag.
Zelensky’s virtual speech to the Israeli Knesset caused disquiet there over his reference to the Nazi Holocaust being the equivalent to the “holocaust” confronting Ukraine. This despite both Zelensky and Ukrainian PM Groysman being Jewish. Zelensky’s family included relatives killed during the Nazi “holocaust by bullets” that took the lives of upwards of 1.5 million Jews. Zelensky had beseeched Israel for military assistance but applauded Israeli PM Naftali Bennett efforts at mediating the dispute directly with Russian President Putin. Israel’s nuanced relations with Russia reflect the deconfliction agreement with Russia giving Israel free of action to undertake pre-emptive air attacks against Iranian targets in Syria, Iraq and more recently, Iran, itself.
Macron’s promotion of European security arrangements in collaboration with NATO has gotten attention in French polling. The latest IFOP poll indicated 88% of French sampled are clearly worried about impact on Europe from Putin’s war in Ukraine. 40% of those polled indicated that may influence their vote in the upcoming First and Second Round of the Presidential Elections. Our conversation will focus on the way the leading contenders are reacting to the crisis in Ukraine, and how that influences voter intentions.
There is one contender in the looming French Presidential race who may end up facing Macron in the second round. Marine Le Pen of the National Rally who in the recent past had boosted Putin, taken large loans from Russian banks, and even had campaign flyers featuring profiles of her and Russian President Putin. She has segued in her campaign to focusing on domestic issues like the cost of living–occasioned by inflationary pressure from the European security crisis—and modest support for the EU. Currently pre- first round polling show Macron favored at 28 percent, with Le Pen trailing at 20 percent, with others across the political spectrum from far right to greens trailing at half those levels to single digits. Zemmour, who fell by four points and favors visas for Ukrainian refugees, but not asylum for other religions—meaning Muslims. Prior to entering the Presidential campaign, he fashioned himself as a “French Putin.”
French Jews have concerns over rising antisemitism, with over 85% in recent polls expressing that view. That was evident in remarks by Valerie Pécresse candidate of the center right Les Republicans party at a memorial on the 10th anniversary in Toulouse of the Al Qaeda inspired massacre by Mohammed Merah who killed a teacher and three young students at Jewish day School. It was also evident in remarks by French President Macron and visiting Israeli President Israel Herzog over the issue of French views on the emerging Iranian nuclear deal with leaked disquieting provisions on release of an estimated $100 billion dollars of impounded oil revenues and delisting of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps from terrorist lists. Macron commented that he had “Israel’s security Interests” in mind.
Against this background we held our sixth in a series of discussions with American ex-pat in Paris, Nidra Poller in the final prelude to the French Presidential elections, First Round on April 10th, Second Round on April 24th.
Jerome Gordon: We’re here today for another stellar discussion with American ex-pat in Paris, Nidra Poller. It comes at a time of the NATO summit over Putin’s war against Ukraine. It also comes in the final strokes of the campaign for the French presidential elections, with the first round on April 10th and the second round on the 24th. There are some interesting developments relative to the French position on Ukraine. Embattled Ukraine President, Volodymyr Zelensky, gave a virtual speech to the French National Assembly on March 23rd. What was the reaction to his criticism of billions of euros of French investment in Russia “placing profits over human lives”? Further, what is the French opinion of this Jewish President of the Ukraine?
Nidra Poller: Well, opinion is highly favorable. The majority attitude in France is recognition of what’s at stake and great appreciation for President Zelensky’s leadership and the courage of the Ukrainian people and army. There is a forgiving attitude to anything that might be a bit controversial. I would say, with the exception of the ultra-nationalists and some of the far left, there is very great respect and consideration. President Zelensky had a standing ovation, as every time he speaks. As for French companies, it’s a mixture of understanding that some of them can pull out from one day to the next. But all of them recognize that they can’t go on cooperating with Russia. The separation process is underway. As for weaning away from Russian gas and oil, there is a general recognition, with the exceptions that I mentioned, that it has to be done.
Let me put it this way, Jerry: this is a complete break with the entire European security system that has been in place since the fall of the Soviet Union. The very notion of mutual deterrence has suddenly disappeared. A small, very courageous country is being invaded, pummeled with bombs aimed at the civilian population, things that haven’t happened in Europe since the Second World War. And, of course, we could all help, whether or not Ukraine is in NATO. Why aren’t we doing more? If we could give them that no fly zone, they would win, instead of being tortured day and night, and hanging on by a thread. We can’t do that for a simple reason: nuclear blackmail. What puzzles me, especially coming from certain conservative quarters I know very well, that we’ve worked with in the past, is that they don’t seem to understand that.
They don’t seem to see the difference between the kind of childish Black Lives Matter consciousness raising that went on after George Floyd was killed, and the sweeping reaction to the total disruption of any system of security in Europe. For some of the reality-deniers, the solution is, “We have to sit around the table.” That’s very French. We’ll sit around the table, and we can have good food, good wine and discuss what should be done. We have to sit around the table and put together a new European security structure. And Russia must be included. Well, I think that’s preposterous.
How can Russia be included in the security plan? Russia has to be precisely excluded, and the security has to be built against Russia. This is a total paradigm shift in modern history. In the coming years, people will be judged for their ability to understand it. I’ll give you some details soon about the range of positions taken here in France. But I’d like to stress, for our American audience that might or might not be concerned, his is happening around the corner from us here in Europe. We know that one false move and it hits home. The Third World War they talk about will be in Europe. Like the Second one.
Jerry Gordon: Nidra, you were on an online webinar when the subject of Zelensky’s speech to the Israeli Knesset came up, which was disquieting to some Knesset members. The guest on the webinar was a famous Soviet-era Jewish Human Rights Icon, Natan Sharansky. What were his views about the Israeli criticism of Zelensky and what was the surprising comment from a relative of yours in California, who we both hold in high esteem, who participated in this very interesting episode?
Nidra Poller: That’s the world of Zoom! I’m following the program here in Paris and suddenly there’s a question from my cousin in California. She asked Sharansky the question that Israelis have raised—some cautiously and others with severe criticism and, sometimes, angry comments: “He can go to hell. What is he talking about? Doesn’t he realize how vulnerable we are, and Ukraine didn’t even vote against the Anti-Zionist UN Resolutions.” Sharansky stands up for democracy in many difficult situations when others say it’s a lost cause. I always trust him on essential questions of conscience.
Sharansky said that Zelensky is admirable in leading his country, the army is admirable, the population is admirable. What is happening to them is unforgivable, and the fact that we can’t stop it is unbearable. If the president made a mistake and said something which wasn’t exactly true about the way the Ukrainians helped Jews during the Shoah—though there are a lot of righteous gentiles from Ukraine … Sharansky was kind, forgiving, and thoughtful. He doesn’t think we absolutely have to call Zelensky on those, however valid, complaints from Israelis. But it’s better to watch the podcast and listen to Sharansky’s answer in full. It should be available soon on the ISGAP site. .
Jerry Gordon: Thank you for that. French President, Macron, is in a very interesting position. He showed up at the NATO Ukraine summit, supportive of certain actions that NATO wanted to entertain, but he’s also on rotation as the EU President. That raises questions of “Does he support tougher sanctions against Russia”? Moreover, “what is France doing in the context of extending humanitarian aid and possible sanctuary for Ukrainian refugees”?
Nidra Poller: We’ve already received about 20,000 refugees. They are warmly welcomed. I would say that Macron is strong on accepting refugees, strong on giving military and humanitarian aid. Strong on cutting commercial ties with Russia, strong on sanctions. It puts his political competitors in the upcoming elections in a tough position. Sometimes they express it awkwardly, saying it’s not fair. What isn’t fair? The outgoing president is playing an important role in an existential crisis. How can they compete with that? In fact, the president does have to deal with an existential threat. And he’s doing quite well. Voters, with some obvious exceptions, will ask themselves if the other candidates could do as well. Zelensky has been praising Macron for his role. Some were saying that Macron stepped up but didn’t get good results. They’ve gone quiet now.
When the country faces an existential threat, you need national union. It’s not debatable. You have to stand behind your President. On this question, I’m talking again about some of our American conservative friends. Today, they think it’s more important to trash Biden than to encourage him to do the most he can do to save Ukraine. They will even lie to make their point. They claim that when Trump was president, there were no problems in Ukraine, Russia never attacked, everything was fine. Now, by the fault of the voters, or the fault of election fraud, he’s no longer president. I asked a friend who is a fervent Trump supporter why, if Trump is so strong, he doesn’t he call up Putin and tell him to stop? The answer was, he can’t do it, he’s not in a position of power anymore.
Well, if he’s so strong and he doesn’t do it, history will judge that.
Jerry Gordon: At the NATO summit, President Biden made a great play about the US providing natural gas to those suffering EU states now that the Nord Stream 1 and 2 Russian pipelines have been taken offline. Strategically Macron has supported—even before this Russia invasion of Ukraine—France’s reliance on climate-correct nuclear power, in sharp contrast to former German Chancellors Merkel and Schroeder, who stressed renewable and clean gas energy after the 2012 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.
Nidra Poller: What happened is, the Greens had strong influence on national energy policy during the previous administration. President Hollande gave in to their demands that we get weaned from nuclear power, reducing it to half of the total, then a quarter, etc. Macron inherited that. He closed one nuclear plant that had already been halfway shut down. Then, he reversed the policy. Now he’s very happy that we have nuclear power and are only dependent on a small amount of Russian gas and oil. The same is true for the United States, though I see that the US was importing Russian oil. The EU had previously supported the Mid-East gas pipeline, involving Israel, Cyprus, and Greece. that Biden opposes.
If I look at the general direction in the most responsible places, I would say they’re going to work on all of these things. It took time and a shock, but they suddenly face up to something they had been denying for so long. If you look back at the whole relationship with Russia, you can ask who understood, before Russia invaded Ukraine, the full extent of this threat to energy resources?
Jerry Gordon: Where do the French Presidential candidates stand on Putin’s War in Ukraine? What are the prospects of Zemmour, Le Pen, Pécresse, Mélenchon versus Macron in the first and second Rounds, April 10th and 24th?
Nidra Poller: What I’m looking at now is, who can react fast enough and understand what’s at stake in the national elections in April. And there you have some glaring failings. As to Macron’s standing– if the polls mean anything, he’s been given as the winner since the beginning. What changes in the electoral result is the percentage of his plurality. What might change, given the current situation with Russia and Ukraine, is which candidate will survive to face him in the first round. The polls are like see-saws! You can go to one TV channel and Valérie Pécresse (Les Républicains) is in the basement. You switch to another channel, and it’s Eric Zemmour in the basement.
This is probably the hardest election to call in modern times in France. The factor of abstention is considerable. There’s no way to know if people that express their preference will actually vote. We’ve had examples where one candidate was high in the polls, but the voters didn’t turn out. Let’s go down the line and see how it’s playing out. Marine Le Pen’s voters might care about what’s happening in Ukraine, but it’s not their main problem. She has a troubling proximity to Putin and Russia. She has a large loan from the Russian Bank. She had to skittle out of that issue as fast as possible. Her program now is focused on how the French people will suffer from the sanctions and her job is to protect them, to insure they have no loss in buying power and won’t be exposed to runaway inflation.
That seems to work with her voters. So, she might make it to the second round. But she won’t win. The question is, will some that said they would vote for Zemmour figure out that a vote for Zemmour means Macron will be reelected? Some might switch to Pécresse. Valérie Pécresse has an image problem. The same people that claim to defend our wonderful French culture, the elegance, refinement, the art and literature– and she’s quite elegant refined and cultivated—find her too bourgeois to be president. They claim she doesn’t understand the little man. In fact, as president of the largest region in France, Ile-de-France, she’s constantly dealing with the problems of the little man. But she has a problem getting her message across. We’ve never had a female president. As it looks now, she probably won’t make it to the second round.
Zemmour is in a tight situation. He’s lost too much in the polls. His image of the candidate that comes out of the blue and soars to the heights is not holding up. The next question will be the respective roles Les Républicains and Reconquêe in the legislative elections and, eventually, in reshaping the Right. Zemmour’s position on Ukraine is incoherent. On the one hand, he’ll say that Russia has no justification for attacking Ukraine. But he follows with … you have to understand that Russia has been humiliated and constantly targeted by NATO, they have a right to say they don’t want NATO on their border. Zemmour would like us to forget that at the beginning of this crisis, he gave the Putin/Russian version of history: the western part of Ukraine is Galicia, it’s Poland; on the east, it’s Russia. Ukraine has to compromise.
Donetsk and Luhansk, the breakaway republics that Putin created in Eastern Ukraine, are like a two-state solution. Claiming the right to limited autonomy, Putin uses them to try to destroy Ukraine. That’s what he’s been doing for the last eight years. He got away with it, so he thought he could get away with even more. Presidents Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden all have a share in this. The Europeans too. What we need to look at now is: how are they reacting to the new situation?
Germany suddenly increased its military budget by tens of billions of euros, and is sending lethal weapons to Ukraine. It’s a complete break with the past. None of the center to far right candidates– Marine Le Pen, Eric Zemmour, Valérie Pécresse –give the impression, in their approach to European security in the wake of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, that they would handle the situation better than the outgoing president. The issues where they disagree with Macron that will be a problem for France over the next five years, are related to jihad, Islamization, immigration, crime, domestic security… On some of those issues, Macron has to move to the right. In fact, he has picked up elements of Valérie Pécresse’s platform.
There’s an incident that occurred with Zemmour this week. We have a terrible problem now with crack-heads. This is not a country where people can be parked off in the hinterland, everything is next-door to everything else. So, the crack-heads are next-door to costly apartments in gentrified neighborhoods. Zemmour went to one of these trouble-spots to show he would be tough on this kind of thing. And he was physically attacked. His usually discrete bodyguards had to come out in the open and get him out of there. It’s not the first time that a candidate has been attacked, but he didn’t look very strong. It’s nice to perform at a big rally with people that worship you. You say you’ll know how to deal with the problem. But when you get up close to it, you can’t even defend yourself, let alone defend France. So, incidents like this are detrimental to Zemmour’s campaign. And he has not gleaned any support from the Les Républicains. His idea of making the new right, which would include what’s called the far right, is not going anywhere.
Jerry Gordon: How do the French Jews feel about this election? There have been a couple of disturbing polls– one indicated that an overwhelming number of French Jews who were polled said that antisemitism is a problem for them. And there’s also a question of who they would prefer to vote for in this election.
Nidra Poller: Well, I don’t know of any polls that give a clear picture. There is not a Jewish vote per se, but the Jewish vote in France is, generally speaking, on the right. The Jewish vote for the left would be very limited.
On the question of Ukraine, there’s fierce debate, on an international scale, among Jewish commentators. One commentator, who has been very brilliantly distinguished in other aspects, wrote an article about “Zelensky the warmonger” who exploited the Shoah. I know people were upset by the Ukraine President exploiting the Shoah–in which he lost relatives–but Zelensky the “warmonger”?
Sarah Cattan, the editor-in-chief of Tribune Juive, where I publish regularly, has been very good at publishing a wide variety of viewpoints. Some of the writers are totally defending Ukraine and others go all the way back to the 17th Century Cossacks to undermine its reputation. They talk about the neo-Nazis, I ask you, how many neo-Nazis do you have in the United States and how many do we have in France” What about the January 6th invasion of the Capitol in Washington, DC? What prompted the February 24th Russian invasion of Ukraine ? It’s not the time, in my opinion, to pick nits out of the heads of the brave Ukrainians fighters. Because what we’re seeing …this is one of the main questions of our time… Will democracies fight for their freedom? The democracies were reluctant to fight in the Second World War. Finally, they took on the fight for freedom, and they won. Today, again, they are reluctant, or want to fight from a safe distance.
I understand people that say “anything but war,” but then it’s “anything but destruction.” How do you choose? That is the big question of our time. The way we answer that challenge will determine our future as democracies. Today, the contributions in military aid and humanitarian aid and every kind of support have been extraordinary. We’ve never seen anything on this scale. But they don’t seem to understand communications.
You can criticize Zelensky, but he is the one who is leading his country, defending it. Remember, not only Americans but many others thought they would have to exfiltrate him to a safe place where he would lead a government-in-exile, let his people die, and then make a deal. When people saw who he is and how he is, they couldn’t help but admire him. On our side, there is a lot of very defeatist talk. Like, we can’t do a no-fly zone because then it’s going to be all out war. We can’t send Ukraine airplanes because then Putin is going to use nuclear weapons.
We can’t influence reality exclusively by what we say, but it helps. I think it would help to say, wait a minute, if this goes any further, we’re going to just let lose all of the constraints and we’re stronger and we’ll smash Putin. You know the Israelis do that way with Iran.
Jerry Gordon: Right.
Nidra Poller: They don’t say, Iran is so big and what if they attack us and maybe they’ll win. They say, “Don’t you dare, because we’ll smash you to smithereens and no one will ever know where you were.” And it matters. I don’t know if it’s too late to change it. But there are some commentators and specialists here, serious people, who say we should call Putin’s bluff. Because otherwise we’re sitting there watching him destroy this country.
Jerry Gordon: Nidra, this was the 10th anniversary of something that was riveting for me and certainly for you when it occurred. That was the Toulouse Massacre in 2012 where a teacher Jonathan Sandler, his two sons, and the daughter of the director of the Jewish day school were murdered. One of the candidates, Valérie Pécresse, talked about that.
Nidra Poller: Yes. She’s strong on this question.
Jerry Gordon: And also, the occasion for a visit by Israel’s new president, Isaac Herzog who, along with Macron attended a Memorial for the Toulouse victims. Macron assured Herzog that he had Israel’s security in mind. That was a reference to what is emerging in terms of this contrived new nuclear pact with Iran. There are commentators in Israel, the United States, perhaps in Europe, who say this is going to be a disaster. The issue is whether Israel now finds itself in the peculiar position, on the one hand, trying to balance between nuanced behavior to Putin on the one hand, because of the de-confliction agreement that Israel has had for several years now giving it the freedom to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran in Syria, versus, on the other hand, taking action as the strong horse in the Middle East to deal with the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran. That is the range of commentary that has popped up, not only here in the United States but in Israel among some of the knowledgeable commentators. Then there is Israel’s dilemma: hang in there as a mediator of a possible settlement in Putin’s war against Ukraine. A poll in Israel found most Israelis sampled think that Prime Minister Bennett will fail in his role as mediator between Ukraine’s President Zelensky and Russia’s President Putin.
Nidra Poller: Of course, at this point, everyone will fail, that’s clear.
Jerry Gordon: Yes.
Nidra Poller: Mediation doesn’t succeed during war; it comes after it ends.
Jerry Gordon: Yes, that’s correct.
Nidra Poller: Yes, war is bad. But somebody wins, somebody loses, and then they try to negotiate for peace. You don’t succeed in the middle of a war; you just start negotiations. Besides, Putin has shown that he’s not even interested in a cease fire. We can compare Putin with regard to Ukraine and Iran with regard to Israel. Or the Palestinians with regard to Israel. The Palestinians do the same thing as Putin. They start a war and when they lose, they say, “Oh, it’s not fair. Now, here’s what I wanted, and you have to give it to me because if not I’ll start another war.” In the past, there was the Age of Absurdity. Today, we are living in the Age of Incoherence. If they go through with this Iran deal, it’s going to be similar to what a French person felt when he turned on the radio and found out the Nazis were marching into France.
What I mean is, you turn on the television and you discover that you’re being delivered into the hands of another tyrant. It is totally incoherent… Today, I checked rapidly, and didn’t see anything in French media about the Iran deal. If I remember correctly, Russia is in the JCPOA. So how can they make a deal, including Russia, to allow Iran to attack Israel freely while claiming they’d love to help Ukraine, but can’t do it because it’s going to set off a Fourth and a Fifth World War before they’re finished. I can’t believe them; I can’t believe it. The situation in Ukraine is the smoke screen. Could they just go ahead with the Iran deal while no one is looking? But if I understand correctly, the original JCPOA was not signed. If they had signed it, they would have had to go to the US Senate for approval as a treaty. They didn’t. I think the American congress can do something to stop it. It’s simply incoherent. Macron says anti-Zionism is antisemitism, and then France votes in favor of anti-Zionist UN resolutions. And sticks to an official two-state solution policy. But the two-state solution, whether for Ukraine or for Israel, is a form of suicide.
I’ve been following the Vienna negotiations all year, attentive to all the consultations and strong statements. Remember? Nothing is settled until everything is settled. And now they’re going to take the Revolutionary Guard off of the list of terrorist organizations? There can’t be any rational basis for that agreement. Macron will have to discuss it after the elections but, as I said, nobody is talking about it now. We fear that they’re just going to go ahead and do it. Can’t stop Putin, can’t stop the Iranians.
Jerry Gordon: That is the conundrum of the moment now. It would appear to me as a former US Army intelligence officer who six decades ago used to brief commanding officers on Russian military prowess and doctrine during the Cold War. The message was that Ivan is not 10-feet tall. This war in the Ukraine is an illustration of how badly Russia’s armed forces are trained and equipped. The facts are that there is no combat leadership at what we consider the unit level, which was the brilliance of General Marshall during World War I that carried over to World War II and subsequent conflicts. In a discussion with another commentator, I pointed out that nothing has changed in six decades virtually since the end of the Stalin era, the end of the Cold War. As evidenced by the brutality of Russian operations in Ukraine that have stalled.
Nidra Poller: Same techniques and same impasse. When I was a student in the late ’50s… I was at the University of Wisconsin and we had real Communists, because we were perhaps…believe me… the only important left-wing university. All the universities in the United States were conservative in those days. We had real Communists and we had Russians grooming people up, down, and sideways. They hitched onto the civil rights movement, whatever, they were everywhere, and McCarthy was as right as he was wrong. So, they’re doing the same thing now.
By the way, I wanted to tell you that when Valérie Pécresse talks about a long-range policy with Russia, and whether we missed early signs of what is happening today, she always mentions the Wagner mercenaries in Mali and how they pushed us out of Mali. We just took it on the chin, she said,
Jerry Gordon: Pécresse is dead spot on. My colleague and co-author, former US -trained Chadian Lt. General Abakar M. Abdallah who is a Darfur native and Chair of the Sudan United Movement, noted that Putin’s Wagner group is training a Free Arab Army in the Sudan to overthrow neighboring Chad, all amid violence erupting in Senegal. Macron and the EU are not addressing the Russian threat destabilizing the important region of Sahel in Africa.
Nidra Poller: Pécresse speaks Russian. She was in Russia for a year or so when she was a student. She speaks a little Japanese too. She’s very bright and, I think, honest. But it doesn’t seem to help her in the presidential race. The Russians have been getting a foothold here and there. And now they come with their “great” army. I’m sure you’ve heard the stories of our central European grandparents… One of the reasons they left the Pale of Settlement is the that the men would be drafted into the army for 25 years.
Today, you can see, they don’t care. I’ve seen reports from Ukrainian sources …they say the Russians don’t pick up the wounded and dead soldiers. The Ukrainians set up a hotline, I suppose it still works, where Russian mothers, sisters, wives, sweethearts could call and ask for information. They don’t know what’s happened to their own soldiers that were sent there. They weren’t told they were going to war. You can’t have a good army with that kind of disregard. They say the soldiers were given rations unfit for consumption after 2015. These guys are cannon fodder. But, of course, there’s fear of what might be behind them.
Jerry Gordon: True. In many ways, I thought that the resilience on the part of the Ukrainians under these dire circumstances almost paralleled what Israel had to go through in several wars fought from its Independence in 1948, the June 1967 Six Day War, the grueling October 1973, the First and Second Intifada, Operations in 2008-09, 2012, 2014 and 2020 against Hamas in Gaza and the War between the Wars against Iran in Lebanon and Syria.
Nidra Poller: Maybe if Zelensky weren’t in the situation he’s in, he might have been able to make more valid comparisons. We can tell him later, after he survives this terrible ordeal. Yes, of course, there are similarities.
Jerry Gordon: Yes. No one’s written about it.
Nidra Poller: Not the comparisons that some conservatives are throwing at us. Another conservative friend told me he didn’t want to admit the Russians bombed the maternity hospital in Mariupol because it will validate accusations against Israel the next time Hamas hides in the hospital… The Ukrainian troops weren’t hiding in the hospital! It was pregnant women. If you can’t make a distinction between these things…
But I have often written about this: if the West wants to save democracy, they have to stop hammering on Israel. Or saying how much they love Israel but doing everything to undermine Israel’s security. And they have to understand that Israel, like Ukraine…these are the people that fight for their freedom. And that’s the only way they can be free, the only way they can maintain their national integrity.
If you’re sitting in a big comfortable country far away from the battlefield, you might think that your freedom is secure. But in the United States, you have to fight internal enemies too. Why would anyone think that suddenly, after all the centuries and millennia of human life, suddenly you don’t have to fight for your freedom? In everyday life you have to fight for your freedom, and it demands coherence and utility.
We try our best to help and I’m open to debate, but with the people I’m telling you about, there’s no debate. You publish an article, and they say, take me off your list.
Jerry Gordon: On that note, I want to conclude another brilliant wide ranging conversation with you. We will soon know what the results are of the French election, as the first round occurs in just a few weeks followed by the second round to see who is going to get the nod.
Nidra Poller: You can tell your listeners I’m bad at predicting the vote. I never believed the French would elect François Hollande. And they did! But this one is really up for grabs (for the 1st round candidate that will face Macron). We’ll know the result before our next conversation. By then, we’ll be going into the legislative elections. This is important because if Macron wins but doesn’t get a legislative majority, it will be “cohabitation.” And that might be a stumbling block. You know, it’s like a situation in the U.S. where the president doesn’t have a congressional majority. It’s hard to pass legislation.
Jerry Gordon: I want to thank you again an engrossing discussion on France, Russia’s dangerous provocative war against Ukraine, Israel’s dilemma on how best to deny Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons.
Nidra Poller: Thank you.
What happened is, the Greens had strong influence on national energy policy during the previous administration. President Hollande gave in to their demands that we get weaned from nuclear power, reducing it to half of the total, then a quarter, etc. Macron inherited that. He closed one nuclear plant that had already been halfway shut down. Then, he reversed the policy. Now he’s very happy that we have nuclear power and are only dependent on a small amount of Russian gas and oil. The same is true for the United States, though I see that the US was importing Russian oil. The EU had previously supported the Mid-East gas pipeline, involving Israel, Cyprus, and Greece. that Biden opposes.
If I look at the general direction in the most responsible places, I would say they’re going to work on all of these things. It took time and a shock, but they suddenly face up to something they had been denying for so long. If you look back at the whole relationship with Russia, you can ask who understood, before Russia invaded Ukraine, the full extent of this threat to energy resources?
Jerry Gordon: Where do the French Presidential candidates stand on Putin’s War in Ukraine? What are the prospects of Zemmour, Le Pen, Pécresse, Mélenchon versus Macron in the first and second Rounds, April 10th and 24th?
Nidra Poller: What I’m looking at now is, who can react fast enough and understand what’s at stake in the national elections in April. And there you have some glaring failings. As to Macron’s standing– if the polls mean anything, he’s been given as the winner since the beginning. What changes in the electoral result is the percentage of his plurality. What might change, given the current situation with Russia and Ukraine, is which candidate will survive to face him in the first round. The polls are like see-saws! You can go to one TV channel and Valérie Pécresse (Les Républicains) is in the basement. You switch to another channel, and it’s Eric Zemmour in the basement.
This is probably the hardest election to call in modern times in France. The factor of abstention is considerable. There’s no way to know if people that express their preference will actually vote. We’ve had examples where one candidate was high in the polls, but the voters didn’t turn out. Let’s go down the line and see how it’s playing out. Marine Le Pen’s voters might care about what’s happening in Ukraine, but it’s not their main problem. She has a troubling proximity to Putin and Russia. She has a large loan from the Russian Bank. She had to skittle out of that issue as fast as possible. Her program now is focused on how the French people will suffer from the sanctions and her job is to protect them, to insure they have no loss in buying power and won’t be exposed to runaway inflation.
That seems to work with her voters. So, she might make it to the second round. But she won’t win. The question is, will some that said they would vote for Zemmour figure out that a vote for Zemmour means Macron will be reelected? Some might switch to Pécresse. Valérie Pécresse has an image problem. The same people that claim to defend our wonderful French culture, the elegance, refinement, the art and literature– and she’s quite elegant refined and cultivated—find her too bourgeois to be president. They claim she doesn’t understand the little man. In fact, as president of the largest region in France, Ile-de-France, she’s constantly dealing with the problems of the little man. But she has a problem getting her message across. We’ve never had a female president. As it looks now, she probably won’t make it to the second round.
Zemmour is in a tight situation. He’s lost too much in the polls. His image of the candidate that comes out of the blue and soars to the heights is not holding up. The next question will be the respective roles Les Républicains and Reconquêe in the legislative elections and, eventually, in reshaping the Right. Zemmour’s position on Ukraine is incoherent. On the one hand, he’ll say that Russia has no justification for attacking Ukraine. But he follows with … you have to understand that Russia has been humiliated and constantly targeted by NATO, they have a right to say they don’t want NATO on their border. Zemmour would like us to forget that at the beginning of this crisis, he gave the Putin/Russian version of history: the western part of Ukraine is Galicia, it’s Poland; on the east, it’s Russia. Ukraine has to compromise.
Donetsk and Luhansk, the breakaway republics that Putin created in Eastern Ukraine, are like a two-state solution. Claiming the right to limited autonomy, Putin uses them to try to destroy Ukraine. That’s what he’s been doing for the last eight years. He got away with it, so he thought he could get away with even more. Presidents Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden all have a share in this. The Europeans too. What we need to look at now is: how are they reacting to the new situation?
Germany suddenly increased its military budget by tens of billions of euros, and is sending lethal weapons to Ukraine. It’s a complete break with the past. None of the center to far right candidates– Marine Le Pen, Eric Zemmour, Valérie Pécresse –give the impression, in their approach to European security in the wake of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, that they would handle the situation better than the outgoing president. The issues where they disagree with Macron that will be a problem for France over the next five years, are related to jihad, Islamization, immigration, crime, domestic security… On some of those issues, Macron has to move to the right. In fact, he has picked up elements of Valérie Pécresse’s platform.
There’s an incident that occurred with Zemmour this week. We have a terrible problem now with crack-heads. This is not a country where people can be parked off in the hinterland, everything is next-door to everything else. So, the crack-heads are next-door to costly apartments in gentrified neighborhoods. Zemmour went to one of these trouble-spots to show he would be tough on this kind of thing. And he was physically attacked. His usually discrete bodyguards had to come out in the open and get him out of there. It’s not the first time that a candidate has been attacked, but he didn’t look very strong. It’s nice to perform at a big rally with people that worship you. You say you’ll know how to deal with the problem. But when you get up close to it, you can’t even defend yourself, let alone defend France. So, incidents like this are detrimental to Zemmour’s campaign. And he has not gleaned any support from the Les Républicains. His idea of making the new right, which would include what’s called the far right, is not going anywhere.
Jerry Gordon: How do the French Jews feel about this election? There have been a couple of disturbing polls– one indicated that an overwhelming number of French Jews who were polled said that antisemitism is a problem for them. And there’s also a question of who they would prefer to vote for in this election.
Nidra Poller: Well, I don’t know of any polls that give a clear picture. There is not a Jewish vote per se, but the Jewish vote in France is, generally speaking, on the right. The Jewish vote for the left would be very limited.
On the question of Ukraine, there’s fierce debate, on an international scale, among Jewish commentators. One commentator, who has been very brilliantly distinguished in other aspects, wrote an article about “Zelensky the warmonger” who exploited the Shoah. I know people were upset by the Ukraine President exploiting the Shoah–in which he lost relatives–but Zelensky the “warmonger”?
Sarah Cattan, the editor-in-chief of Tribune Juive, where I publish regularly, has been very good at publishing a wide variety of viewpoints. Some of the writers are totally defending Ukraine and others go all the way back to the 17th Century Cossacks to undermine its reputation. They talk about the neo-Nazis, I ask you, how many neo-Nazis do you have in the United States and how many do we have in France” What about the January 6th invasion of the Capitol in Washington, DC? What prompted the February 24th Russian invasion of Ukraine ? It’s not the time, in my opinion, to pick nits out of the heads of the brave Ukrainians fighters. Because what we’re seeing …this is one of the main questions of our time… Will democracies fight for their freedom? The democracies were reluctant to fight in the Second World War. Finally, they took on the fight for freedom, and they won. Today, again, they are reluctant, or want to fight from a safe distance.
I understand people that say “anything but war,” but then it’s “anything but destruction.” How do you choose? That is the big question of our time. The way we answer that challenge will determine our future as democracies. Today, the contributions in military aid and humanitarian aid and every kind of support have been extraordinary. We’ve never seen anything on this scale. But they don’t seem to understand communications.
You can criticize Zelensky, but he is the one who is leading his country, defending it. Remember, not only Americans but many others thought they would have to exfiltrate him to a safe place where he would lead a government-in-exile, let his people die, and then make a deal. When people saw who he is and how he is, they couldn’t help but admire him. On our side, there is a lot of very defeatist talk. Like, we can’t do a no-fly zone because then it’s going to be all out war. We can’t send Ukraine airplanes because then Putin is going to use nuclear weapons.
We can’t influence reality exclusively by what we say, but it helps. I think it would help to say, wait a minute, if this goes any further, we’re going to just let lose all of the constraints and we’re stronger and we’ll smash Putin. You know the Israelis do that way with Iran.
Jerry Gordon: Right.
Nidra Poller: They don’t say, Iran is so big and what if they attack us and maybe they’ll win. They say, “Don’t you dare, because we’ll smash you to smithereens and no one will ever know where you were.” And it matters. I don’t know if it’s too late to change it. But there are some commentators and specialists here, serious people, who say we should call Putin’s bluff. Because otherwise we’re sitting there watching him destroy this country.
Jerry Gordon: Nidra, this was the 10th anniversary of something that was riveting for me and certainly for you when it occurred. That was the Toulouse Massacre in 2012 where a teacher Jonathan Sandler, his two sons, and the daughter of the director of the Jewish day school were murdered. One of the candidates, Valérie Pécresse, talked about that.
Nidra Poller: Yes. She’s strong on this question.
Jerry Gordon: And also, the occasion for a visit by Israel’s new president, Isaac Herzog who, along with Macron attended a Memorial for the Toulouse victims. Macron assured Herzog that he had Israel’s security in mind. That was a reference to what is emerging in terms of this contrived new nuclear pact with Iran. There are commentators in Israel, the United States, perhaps in Europe, who say this is going to be a disaster. The issue is whether Israel now finds itself in the peculiar position, on the one hand, trying to balance between nuanced behavior to Putin on the one hand, because of the de-confliction agreement that Israel has had for several years now giving it the freedom to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran in Syria, versus, on the other hand, taking action as the strong horse in the Middle East to deal with the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran. That is the range of commentary that has popped up, not only here in the United States but in Israel among some of the knowledgeable commentators. Then there is Israel’s dilemma: hang in there as a mediator of a possible settlement in Putin’s war against Ukraine. A poll in Israel found most Israelis sampled think that Prime Minister Bennett will fail in his role as mediator between Ukraine’s President Zelensky and Russia’s President Putin.
Nidra Poller: Of course, at this point, everyone will fail, that’s clear.
Jerry Gordon: Yes.
Nidra Poller: Mediation doesn’t succeed during war; it comes after it ends.
Jerry Gordon: Yes, that’s correct.
Nidra Poller: Yes, war is bad. But somebody wins, somebody loses, and then they try to negotiate for peace. You don’t succeed in the middle of a war; you just start negotiations. Besides, Putin has shown that he’s not even interested in a cease fire. We can compare Putin with regard to Ukraine and Iran with regard to Israel. Or the Palestinians with regard to Israel. The Palestinians do the same thing as Putin. They start a war and when they lose, they say, “Oh, it’s not fair. Now, here’s what I wanted, and you have to give it to me because if not I’ll start another war.” In the past, there was the Age of Absurdity. Today, we are living in the Age of Incoherence. If they go through with this Iran deal, it’s going to be similar to what a French person felt when he turned on the radio and found out the Nazis were marching into France.
What I mean is, you turn on the television and you discover that you’re being delivered into the hands of another tyrant. It is totally incoherent… Today, I checked rapidly, and didn’t see anything in French media about the Iran deal. If I remember correctly, Russia is in the JCPOA. So how can they make a deal, including Russia, to allow Iran to attack Israel freely while claiming they’d love to help Ukraine, but can’t do it because it’s going to set off a Fourth and a Fifth World War before they’re finished. I can’t believe them; I can’t believe it. The situation in Ukraine is the smoke screen. Could they just go ahead with the Iran deal while no one is looking? But if I understand correctly, the original JCPOA was not signed. If they had signed it, they would have had to go to the US Senate for approval as a treaty. They didn’t. I think the American congress can do something to stop it. It’s simply incoherent. Macron says anti-Zionism is antisemitism, and then France votes in favor of anti-Zionist UN resolutions. And sticks to an official two-state solution policy. But the two-state solution, whether for Ukraine or for Israel, is a form of suicide.
I’ve been following the Vienna negotiations all year, attentive to all the consultations and strong statements. Remember? Nothing is settled until everything is settled. And now they’re going to take the Revolutionary Guard off of the list of terrorist organizations? There can’t be any rational basis for that agreement. Macron will have to discuss it after the elections but, as I said, nobody is talking about it now. We fear that they’re just going to go ahead and do it. Can’t stop Putin, can’t stop the Iranians.
Jerry Gordon: That is the conundrum of the moment now. It would appear to me as a former US Army intelligence officer who six decades ago used to brief commanding officers on Russian military prowess and doctrine during the Cold War. The message was that Ivan is not 10-feet tall. This war in the Ukraine is an illustration of how badly Russia’s armed forces are trained and equipped. The facts are that there is no combat leadership at what we consider the unit level, which was the brilliance of General Marshall during World War I that carried over to World War II and subsequent conflicts. In a discussion with another commentator, I pointed out that nothing has changed in six decades virtually since the end of the Stalin era, the end of the Cold War. As evidenced by the brutality of Russian operations in Ukraine that have stalled.
Nidra Poller: Same techniques and same impasse. When I was a student in the late ’50s… I was at the University of Wisconsin and we had real Communists, because we were perhaps…believe me… the only important left-wing university. All the universities in the United States were conservative in those days. We had real Communists and we had Russians grooming people up, down, and sideways. They hitched onto the civil rights movement, whatever, they were everywhere, and McCarthy was as right as he was wrong. So, they’re doing the same thing now.
By the way, I wanted to tell you that when Valérie Pécresse talks about a long-range policy with Russia, and whether we missed early signs of what is happening today, she always mentions the Wagner mercenaries in Mali and how they pushed us out of Mali. We just took it on the chin, she said,
Jerry Gordon: Pécresse is dead spot on. My colleague and co-author, former US -trained Chadian Lt. General Abakar M. Abdallah who is a Darfur native and Chair of the Sudan United Movement, noted that Putin’s Wagner group is training a Free Arab Army in the Sudan to overthrow neighboring Chad, all amid violence erupting in Senegal. Macron and the EU are not addressing the Russian threat destabilizing the important region of Sahel in Africa.
Nidra Poller: Pécresse speaks Russian. She was in Russia for a year or so when she was a student. She speaks a little Japanese too. She’s very bright and, I think, honest. But it doesn’t seem to help her in the presidential race. The Russians have been getting a foothold here and there. And now they come with their “great” army. I’m sure you’ve heard the stories of our central European grandparents… One of the reasons they left the Pale of Settlement is the that the men would be drafted into the army for 25 years.
Today, you can see, they don’t care. I’ve seen reports from Ukrainian sources …they say the Russians don’t pick up the wounded and dead soldiers. The Ukrainians set up a hotline, I suppose it still works, where Russian mothers, sisters, wives, sweethearts could call and ask for information. They don’t know what’s happened to their own soldiers that were sent there. They weren’t told they were going to war. You can’t have a good army with that kind of disregard. They say the soldiers were given rations unfit for consumption after 2015. These guys are cannon fodder. But, of course, there’s fear of what might be behind them.
Jerry Gordon: True. In many ways, I thought that the resilience on the part of the Ukrainians under these dire circumstances almost paralleled what Israel had to go through in several wars fought from its Independence in 1948, the June 1967 Six Day War, the grueling October 1973, the First and Second Intifada, Operations in 2008-09, 2012, 2014 and 2020 against Hamas in Gaza and the War between the Wars against Iran in Lebanon and Syria.
Nidra Poller: Maybe if Zelensky weren’t in the situation he’s in, he might have been able to make more valid comparisons. We can tell him later, after he survives this terrible ordeal. Yes, of course, there are similarities.
Jerry Gordon: Yes. No one’s written about it.
Nidra Poller: Not the comparisons that some conservatives are throwing at us. Another conservative friend told me he didn’t want to admit the Russians bombed the maternity hospital in Mariupol because it will validate accusations against Israel the next time Hamas hides in the hospital… The Ukrainian troops weren’t hiding in the hospital! It was pregnant women. If you can’t make a distinction between these things…
But I have often written about this: if the West wants to save democracy, they have to stop hammering on Israel. Or saying how much they love Israel but doing everything to undermine Israel’s security. And they have to understand that Israel, like Ukraine…these are the people that fight for their freedom. And that’s the only way they can be free, the only way they can maintain their national integrity.
If you’re sitting in a big comfortable country far away from the battlefield, you might think that your freedom is secure. But in the United States, you have to fight internal enemies too. Why would anyone think that suddenly, after all the centuries and millennia of human life, suddenly you don’t have to fight for your freedom? In everyday life you have to fight for your freedom, and it demands coherence and utility.
We try our best to help and I’m open to debate, but with the people I’m telling you about, there’s no debate. You publish an article, and they say, take me off your list.
Jerry Gordon: On that note, I want to conclude another brilliant wide ranging conversation with you. We will soon know what the results are of the French election, as the first round occurs in just a few weeks followed by the second round to see who is going to get the nod.
Nidra Poller: You can tell your listeners I’m bad at predicting the vote. I never believed the French would elect François Hollande. And they did! But this one is really up for grabs (for the 1st round candidate that will face Macron). We’ll know the result before our next conversation. By then, we’ll be going into the legislative elections. This is important because if Macron wins but doesn’t get a legislative majority, it will be “cohabitation.” And that might be a stumbling block. You know, it’s like a situation in the U.S. where the president doesn’t have a congressional majority. It’s hard to pass legislation.
Jerry Gordon: I want to thank you again an engrossing discussion on France, Russia’s dangerous provocative war against Ukraine, Israel’s dilemma on how best to deny Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons.
Nidra Poller: Thank you.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-01 22:52:052022-04-01 22:52:05A Second Term for Emmanuel Macron while Russia Bombs and Batters Ukraine?
The Southern Poverty Law Center, once again, has released its annual report of notorious ‘hate groups’ in America.
As usual, Christian Action Network, which produces Shout Out Patriots, is listed.
The ABC News affiliate in Lynchburg, WSET, was excited to see our name and furiously posted a story naming our group as one of five ‘hate’ groups in the area.
Who do we hate? Who knows? And ABC News isn’t saying.
WSET claims we have “general hate,” whatever that means. They don’t elaborate or explain.
Perhaps it’s not surprising that WSET never bothered to call or email our organization (we’ve been located in their area for 33 years!) so we could at least defend ourselves against the accusation.
But how would that conversation go?
“Sir, your group has been accused of ‘general hate,’ would you like to respond?”
“Sure. Where’s the evidence?”
“The Southern Poverty Law Center IS the evidence; they’re accusing you of hating everything.”
“We hate the killing of defenseless unborn babies. We hate allowing men to destroy female sports. We hate labeling mothers as ‘birthing people.’ We hate that all white people are labeled as ‘inherently racist.’ Will you print that?”
Indeed, I would hear a click in my ear before I could further inject that an SPLC employee has accused the civil-rights organization of being “a highly profitable scam.”
“We were part of the con,” Bob Moser wrote for The New Yorker in 2019, “and we knew it.”
But ABC didn’t call us, email us, or give us our day in court. They didn’t have the courage.
If they had, I would have reminded ABC that the LA Times wrote an article several years back citing more than two dozen SPLC employees that accused the organization of “mistreatment, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and racism.”
I long for the old days when the media simply hated us rather than wholly ignoring after running their conservative-bashing, hit-and-run stories.
A kangaroo court would have given us fairer treatment than today’s scandalous journalism.
In this episode of Shout Out Patriots, we also take on Joe Biden’s claim that no constitutional amendment is “absolute.” And our discussion wraps up with our take on a raucous protest at Yale Law School that disrupted a free speech event.
Remember to share our podcast with your friends; it’s one of our last remaining bridges to fight back against censorship of conservative viewpoints.
Also, for the best viewing or listening experience, download the episode to prevent buffering delays.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-01 22:52:042022-04-01 22:52:04PODCAST: ABC News Couldn’t Blow Our House Down
We are coming off two years of lockdowns that were countered with government programs spending billions and billions of dollars to offset the effects of those government-imposed restrictions. We are then hit with a burst of inflation at levels not seen in America for forty years. Additionally, one of the world’s largest energy suppliers decided to attack its neighbor without provocation. This has all brought to the forefront the failed philosophies of a political party and a lesson to be learned.
With the soaring cost of energy and the abandonment of sourcing that energy from America and Russia, there is a logical and pragmatic solution. Restore our own production to the levels we had prior to the Democrats taking over our government. Unfortunately, the party is so driven by their blind allegiance to their green energy policy that has caused this crisis that an adjustment is not even a consideration.
First, Washington proposed a release of oil from the strategic petroleum reserve. One might think that the reserve is for legitimate national emergencies and not just politically embarrassing price increases. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced an agreement among 30 countries to release some 60 million barrels from reserves. The U.S. Has made a commitment to release 30 million barrels. To understand the significance of that, know it equals roughly 1.5 days of U.S. usage.
Then the government wonks in DC suggested a gas tax holiday. At 18.4 cents per gallon, that would barely dent the price of gas at your local station. California then started throwing around their own gas tax holiday. Governor Newsom suggested he wanted the holiday. At 53.3 cents per gallon (second-highest state tax in the nation), that would be a significant decrease. Newsom also suggested eliminating an automatic tax increase that went into effect on July 1, 2022, but the legislature balked.
Before we go further, the gas tax is a use tax. It is supposedly dedicated to the repair of roads and bridges. Drive in California and one might think how the funds are not being spent in a highly effective manner in maintaining roads and highways.
The state currently has a projected surplus of $46 billion so expending some of that to alleviate significant financial pain for residents would be a shot in the arm — especially for middle-class workers.
It would be too easy a solution to let the people who use gas get a direct benefit by reducing the price of the product they are taxing – gasoline. The legislators in Sacramento have a better idea. They want to send every taxpayer a $400 check. They even said it would cover a once-a-week fill-up for a year. The problem is the check goes to every taxpayer whether they have a car or not or whether they use gasoline in their vehicle.
This is a quintessentially Democrat solution. Instead of letting people make their own decisions on their money, they will make their decisions for them. They will run the money through their hands, processed by the government union employees who are the Democrats’ principal campaign contributors, and then give us back the residue (at their discretion of course). We will never know the cost of this program which would be zero if they simply suspended the gas tax.
This rebate program comes on the heels of the Secretary in charge of the unemployment program in California stating that $11.4 billion of benefits were given out fraudulently. She believes it could be an additional $20 billion. Did Ms. Su get fired in disgrace? No, she was hired by the Biden Administration to be the Deputy Secretary of Labor.
With this recent history, one might think sending out random checks for $9 billion might give one pause. Not these Sacramento Democrats.
The latest proposals have Newsom recommending $400 debit cards (that worked so well with unemployment benefits why not bring it back for an encore – they never learn). The good thing is that the cards would be limited to two per person if you happen to own two vehicles. The members of the legislature proposed $200 rebates per family member (six-year-olds need gas tax rebates), but income restrictive up to $250,000 (whatever that means except we know it is punishing people for being successful but does not recognize the cost of living in California has been driven ridiculously high by government policies.) Of course, these silly ideas do not recognize EVs owners who will also get the money.
There are a combined one million EVs and hybrids in California. They pay either no gasoline tax or a severely reduced amount. They will likewise be getting $400 debit cards along with all the criminals who got the unemployment debit cards and went on a buying spree on Rodeo Drive. Makes sense, doesn’t it?
Virtually every time there is a problem that is created by a Democrat-induced program, their solution is to create another program instead of either correcting the existing program or dismantling it. No wonder California has 25% of the country’s state government unionized employees.
The lesson to be learned here is this is what happens when you have one-party control of all the levers of a state. The last time a Republican was elected statewide in California was 2006 and that was Arnold – enough said. With the Democrats having control of every statewide constitutional office, supermajorities in both houses of the legislature, and almost every judge appointed by their team, controls on them simply do not exist.
Ask the Russians or the Chinese if one party government works well. That is how simple problems end up with complicated solutions. This could be your future.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-04-01 04:00:002022-04-01 04:00:00A Defining Moment
At least 255,000 excess votes were cast in the 2020 presidential election across six battleground states, according to a new study that examined individual voting precincts.
Economist John Lott, president of the Crime Research Prevention Center, is the author of the peer-reviewed study, which looked at precincts in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
The study, set to be published in the academic journal Public Choice, compares precincts where there were allegations of voter fraud to similar precincts in neighboring counties that had no fraud allegations. In each comparison, the two precincts examined fall on opposite sides of a county line—in some cases across the street.
Precincts are county-level election subdivisions, usually with fewer than 1,000 voters. Precincts in counties with fraud allegations had significantly higher voter participation than adjacent precincts in counties without alleged fraud, the study found.
“Precincts are generally small, homogeneous areas, and when two areas are adjacent and similar to each other, why would one precinct have far many more votes?” Lott asked The Daily Signal in an interview. “If you have a get-out-the-vote campaign, you care about winning the state, [and are] not focused on the precinct.”
Lott’s study found that at least 255,000 excess votes were cast—and possibly as many as 368,000—for Democratic nominee Joe Biden in six states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Biden beat then-President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, by a total of 313,253 votes in the six states.
Calculating Possible Fraudulent Votes
The study compares Trump’s share of absentee votes in adjacent precincts and accounts for differences in Trump’s share of in-person votes.
The study also notes that in-person votes are counted at the precinct level, while absentee votes are counted at a county’s central election office.
The potential number of fraudulent votes is reached by comparing the number of votes cast in bordering precincts on opposite sides of a county line. In some cases, Lott said, voters could be neighbors who live across the street from one another.
“To isolate the impact of a county’s vote-counting process and potential fraud on candidates’ vote margins, I first compare voting precincts in a county with alleged fraud to adjacent precincts in neighboring counties with no allegations of fraud,” Lott’s study says, according to a published abstract. He continues:
I compute the differences in President Trump’s vote shares on absentee ballots in those adjacent precincts, controlling for the differences in his vote shares on ballots cast in person. I also control for registered voters’ demographics and compare data for the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.
The study doesn’t question the legitimacy of the outcome of the 2020 election, writes Lott, who has held teaching positions at the University of Chicago, Yale University, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, and Rice University.
Rather, he writes, the analysis indicates that concerns about voter fraud are legitimate and undermine confidence in elections.
‘Have to Be Careful’
Many statements from Trump allies criticizing the 2020 election lacked evidence, which discredited concerns about fraud, Lott told The Daily Signal.
“There were people, perhaps well-meaning, who didn’t check out information before going public with it,” Lott said. “You have to be careful with these things.”
Lott said he waited to talk about his research until it was fully peer-reviewed. He said that process took more than a year, a longer review than usual.
Lott is a former senior adviser for research and statistics at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy, where he dealt with issues of voter fraud, among other matters.
He has been among the most-cited economists in the world, according to an analysis by the Free University of Brussels, or Université libre de Bruxelles.
“John Lott is a serious scholar who does very good, in-depth research,” said Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, the parent organization of The Daily Signal.
“I am very interested in reading his study when it comes out, in particular, to see what lessons it provides for how states can improve the integrity of their election process,” von Spakovsky, who manages Heritage’s Election Law Reform Initiative, said.
Heritage’s Election Fraud Database has documented 1,349 adjudicated cases of voter fraud since 1982.
6,700 Extra Votes for Biden
The Brennan Center for Justice, a left-wing think tank at New York University School of Law, contends that voter fraud in the United States is a “myth.” The center did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment for this report.
Lott’s study compared precincts in Georgia’s Fulton County to neighboring precincts in border counties. The comparisons show what Lott describes as an unexplained 17,000 votes from Fulton County. That’s 32% more than Biden’s official 12,000-vote margin over Trump in the entire state.
Similarly, the study looked at provisional ballots in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County, where voters allegedly were allowed to correct defects in absentee ballots by submitting provisional ballots on Election Day. This practice violated state law, Lott said.
Biden carried Pennsylvania by about 80,000 votes.
“When I examine Georgia and Pennsylvania separately, weak evidence of vote fraud on absentee ballots is found,” Lott’s abstract of the study says. “However, combining the samples produces significant results and implies at least 10,000 additional votes for Biden in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny and Georgia’s Fulton counties.”
His abstract continues:
I then apply the same method to provisional ballots in Allegheny County, where, contrary to state law, voters were allowed to correct alleged defects in absentee ballots by submitting provisional ballots on Election Day. My analysis finds that such permission contributed to a statistically significant additional 6,700 votes for Biden.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-04-01 03:55:002022-04-01 03:55:00Study Raises New Questions About 2020 Election Results in 6 States
Democrats have increasingly pushed their expansive climate agenda through the financial sector and legal system as Congress has failed to implement Green New Deal reforms.
“Congress is really unwilling to impose much in the way of costs and to address climate change,” David Kreutzer, the senior economist at the Institute for Energy Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview. “Frustrated by that, people in Washington want to use non-legislative ways to impose these costs and raise the price of energy-intensive goods and energy in general.”
The Securities and Exchange Commission proposed a sweeping set of rules Monday that would require companies to disclose their carbon emissions and how they were planning to transition away from fossil fuel reliance, the latest example of the sustainable investing movement.
“This is just an attempt by the left to use the business community, the finance sector, companies … to accomplish with other people’s money, what they can’t accomplish at the ballot box,” Andy Puzder, the former CEO of CKE Restaurants and a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told the DCNF in an interview
Democrats, banks, regulators, and activists have increasingly set their sights on the financial sector and legal system, not Congress, for pushing their aggressive climate agenda.
Employing so-called environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives, financial institutions and government agencies have quietly implemented policies prioritizing a focus on factors unrelated to a company’s bottom line, experts said. The ESG movement has swept across the corporate world, leading to individual pledges from companies promising to become more sustainable and improve internal diversity.
In the latest example of the ESG and sustainable investing movement, the Democratic-majority U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed a sweeping set of rules Monday that would require publicly-traded companies to disclose their carbon emissions and how they were planning to transition away from fossil fuel reliance. Senate Banking Committee Ranking Member Pat Toomey was one of many lawmakers to immediately slam the proposal, saying it “hijacks the democratic process and disrespects the limited scope of authority that Congress gave to the SEC.”
“Congress is really unwilling to impose much in the way of costs and to address climate change,” David Kreutzer, the senior economist at the Institute for Energy Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview. “Frustrated by that, people in Washington want to use non-legislative ways to impose these costs and raise the price of energy-intensive goods and energy in general.”
Regulators have also targeted Americans’ pensions. In October, the Department of Labor (DOL), which is tasked with regulating private sector pensions under the 1974 Employee Retirement Income Security Act, reversed a Trump-era rule that placed barriers to fiduciaries’ ability to consider ESG factors when selecting investments.
“The primary purpose of fiduciaries is to look out for the wellbeing of the pensioners who contribute to these funds,” Pat Pizzella, the former deputy secretary of labor during the Trump administration, told the DCNF. “Not to speculate on risky or trendy, expensive ESG products. I think their priorities are a little misplaced.”
He added that the Trump administration’s view was to look at ESG investing from a legal point of view. Pizzella predicted that individuals with pensions managed by fiduciaries that invest in risky ESG-focused companies or funds would eventually take the institutions to court….
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-04-01 03:50:002022-04-01 03:50:00Democrats Look To Sustainable Investing Craze As Means For Pushing Climate Agenda
The pretend-media buried the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 election. Poll results now show almost half of Americans believe Trump would have been re-elected if the media hadn’t suppressed the story. Among media sources guilty of hiding the story were CNN’s Brian Stelter, other CNN analysts, Twitter, Facebook, and MSNBC.
They parroted the line concocted by complicit Left-wing swamp creatures from the nation’s intelligence agencies who claimed the story was just “Russian disinformation” when they had no basis for saying so. Fifty-one former intelligence officials signed a public letter to that effect in the month before the election. Joe Biden relied on this letter in repeating the phony ‘Russian disinformation’ narrative in a presidential debate before the election. The Biden administration has continued to push this line ever since. NBC and the Washington Post were among many media outlets repeating the lie. [more here]
But just recently, the New York Times admitted email evidence from Hunter’s laptop is real, not Russian disinformation. The Washington Post has authenticated thousands of emails from the laptop giving the gory details about Hunter Biden’s influence peddling schemes in Ukraine and China. The Washington Post story described how Hunter Biden and his uncle were paid almost $5 million by an energy company linked to the Chinese government. The Post commented these facts “illustrate the ways in which his family profited from relationships built over Joe Biden’s decades in public service.” CBS now also admits the scandal is real.
So where are the apologies for deliberately misleading the American public? No apologies were forthcoming from the media which now has egg all over its face. And no apologies have been issued by the swamp creatures from the intelligence agencies. Most are not talking, understandably, and some are doubling down. A former CIA agent isn’t sorry in the least. He bragged about it on Twitter: “I take personal pride in personally swinging the election away from Trump. You’re welcome.” The Assistant FBI director of cybersecurity claimshe doesn’t know where the laptop is.
You may not know where it is, Mr. G-Man, but the laptop is real and the scandal is real. Hunter Biden’s problems are just beginning. Prosecutors are looking into his activities and some people believe he is close to indictment. More on the extent of the Biden family corruption on another day, but we now see how the Left stacks its numerous capabilities on top of one another to keep scandals from breaking out and to put the American people to sleep with soothing phony narratives like ‘oh, that’s just Russian disinformation’. Congressman Jim Jordan said, “the mainstream press, along with Big Tech and Democrats, all colluded to keep this important information from the American people just days before our most important election, the presidential election.” That about sums it up. Had enough from our arrogant elites, yet? Or are you going to let them trick you into voting for this level of corruption again? And if you like all these tricks because it means your side wins, there’s a special place in hell for you.
